THIS.   You can grab it off the Skyrim Nexus.    This only does DDS files.  BMP files and AGN files will be ignored.   BMP files have to be done as described above by Toby and others.

 

Great Brian!

Thanks for this!

 

Paolo

I strongly advise against editing any of the stock files, as shown in Kuragiman's screenshots above. They are all in the correct format.

The only files that are worth editing are third party uncompressed (32bit) bmp or dds files and it is only worth resizing files that are 4096x4096 and sometimes 2048x2048.

AGN files are autogen placement and should be left well alone.

toby23 knows what he is talking about. As someone who knew Phil Taylor many years ago when he switched from oceanography to computer graphics in college and who (Phil) ended up as a major contributor in writing the book on DirectX, I can say without question toby23 has this subject nailed.

 

Someone else who I knew back in the days of Steve Lacey on campus who was one of our top advisors from outside revealed all this superficially in something he called a bible on another website but unfortunately most can not comprehend the depth of that topic without specifics.

 

I can say without reservation to not discount a single word toby23 says and follow his direction without question. What toby23 is about to reveal is also valid for environment graphics such as cloud tiles, water, runways, and so on.

 

There are very few interviews and disclosures in the FS world  that qualify as a 'God talked to Moses" situation..  this is probably one of about 3 since Steve Lacey and Aces was disbanded   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOMVlr7x0-s

 

When toby23 posts this information, anyone who reads, comprehends and follows it will become enlightened beyond their wildest dreams regardless of what version of ESP they use.

 

It will place into perspective just how much the public has been taken by developers for some time and how much hair they have lost trying to overcome the problems created by these so called expert developers.

 

good luck, and may the VAS and smooth frames be with you, always

I strongly advise against editing any of the stock files, as shown in Kuragiman's screenshots above. They are all in the correct format.

The only files that are worth editing are third party uncompressed (32bit) bmp or dds files and it is only worth resizing files that are 4096x4096 and sometimes 2048x2048.

AGN files are autogen placement and should be left well alone.

 

For a second I was like, "What is Toby talking about.. .Don't do this!?'      We are on the same page!    Then I noticed what you were referring to.  The default folder in the box is the global scenery folder...    XD     

 

Yes, do not edit this folder folks.   Only edit your 3rd party stuff.    Stay away from the default stuff that came with FSX/P3D.

 

To be fair... I do say in the screen shot to drill down to the folder YOU want to work with.   That is just a default folder in the example shot.    Definitely go find the airport, airplane or landclass 3rd-party texture folder you want to work with but leave Brittney alone!

 

And let me state again just in case you decided not to actually read any of the notes in the screen caps folks;     Texture Optimizer WILL IGNORE your AGN and BMP files.  They will be left alone, untouched, unedited, the way they should be.   This program only looks at DDS files and it is Alpha map aware.    If it see's an alpha map it will determine what type it is and compress it according to the settings you set in the drop down setting box as described in the screen cap

 

I have used this program on every single payware airport and all my HD aircraft liveries.   It works flawlessly, efficiently, quickly and safely.    If you ruin one of your add-ons, or Heaven forbid, your simulation, you seriously did not read a single word I wrote or a single word in the manual of the program and just clicked on random buttons while screaming YEEEEHAW.

This document is long but if you're interested in why you're suffering from OOM errors and how to avoid them, grab a cuppa something and read on...

 

 

 

I've been preaching this for years as well, even to some people in this thread like Kuragiman, and a lot of it I learned from Micheal prior to his passing. I first worked with him back in 2008 and he had taught me the importance of texture sizing, mip mapping, etc. He provided me the tools and methods to do it and I've been optimizing my addon sceneries for years with much success.

 

It worked so well for me that even when I was running FSX on a 32 bit rig back then, with only 2gb of RAM, and a 512gb gpu, I was able to run complex addon airports and aircraft and never had an OOM.

 

Granted these days I run a 64 bit OS and 8GB of RAM, but I use the same methodology and always check new addons I purchase to see what needs to be fixed. You'd be amazed that there are still 3rd party developers sneaking in a few 2048 or larger 32bit textures in their sceneries or providing textures that aren't even mip mapped. Some of the older ORBX airports like Melbourne and Brisbane are loaded with 2048 and 4096 textures which darn near almost make the airports unusable with complex aircraft and AI added to the mix.

 

The only problem I've had passing this knowledge on is that a lot of people just don't want to take the time to do it and would rather spend time looking for a magic tweet that will fix the issue, or just refuse to resize textures because they believe that 1024 sized textures will not be sharp enough or will make the sim look like FS9. To each their own I say, but if you want to take the time, even just a little bit each day, you can be rewarded with a handsomely running sim, be it P3D or FSX and not have to worry that you'll OOM prior to reaching your destination.

I've been preaching this for years as well, even to some people in this thread like Kuragiman, and a lot of it I learned from Micheal prior to his passing. I first worked with him back in 2008 and he had taught me the importance of texture sizing, mip mapping, etc. He provided me the tools and methods to do it and I've been optimizing my addon sceneries for years with much success.

 

It worked so well for me that even when I was running FSX on a 32 bit rig back then, with only 2gb of RAM, and a 512gb gpu, I was able to run complex addon airports and aircraft and never had an OOM.

 

Granted these days I run a 64 bit OS and 8GB of RAM, but I use the same methodology and always check new addons I purchase to see what needs to be fixed. You'd be amazed that there are still 3rd party developers sneaking in a few 2048 or larger 32bit textures in their sceneries or providing textures that aren't even mip mapped. Some of the older ORBX airports like Melbourne and Brisbane are loaded with 2048 and 4096 textures which darn near almost make the airports unusable with complex aircraft and AI added to the mix.

 

The only problem I've had passing this knowledge on is that a lot of people just don't want to take the time to do it and would rather spend time looking for a magic tweet that will fix the issue, or just refuse to resize textures because they believe that 1024 sized textures will not be sharp enough or will make the sim look like FS9. To each their own I say, but if you want to take the time, even just a little bit each day, you can be rewarded with a handsomely running sim, be it P3D or FSX and not have to worry that you'll OOM prior to reaching your destination.

 

*bows to the master*  You have taught me well Obi-wan.    Although... Glenn Johnson's KDAL airport is still whipping my VAS butt even after optimizing.  I can only assume the 3D models he created for the buildings are so ridiculously unoptizimed for VAS usage and frame rate friendliness that it's beyond hope of ever getting over 25 FPS with AI traffic turned on there.    I pushed the textures down to 512 pixels.  I rebuilt his photoreal scenery files with my own optimized ones from my payware project for KDAL and still crashed today while landing in a thunderstorm with LOD 4.5 normal autogen..   a 2k textured PMDG 737 exterior model and 1024 textured VC with mip mapping.    I just sighed as I crashed on Twitch live in front of an audience...   still.. we soldier on.

So, do we have to convert bmp files in dds or we had to leave them alone?

well, in the FWIW department - thought I'd give it a try. I picked one payware a/c and used the texture optimizer on the dds files. Using the same startup, if I load the unmodded textures, fsuipc shows about 20M less VAS remaining.

 

I reboot between loads and it's not a fluke.

 

I'll pick an add on scenery and see how that goes.

 

Vic

Thanks Toby and Brian for all the information, I'm going to try my hand at optimizing some aircraft and scenery and see how it goes!

If I could make a very humble suggestion for anyone using the Optimizer Textures tool available from the Skyrim Nexus for batch converting DDS files.

 

By default, it will also convert any .BMP file into a .DDS, but there is a way to prevent this.

 

After you open the program, choose the More/Extras tab where you set your backup folder and select the Edit Configurations INI button:

 

 

 

Then add the PreserveFile line as indicated below to preserve the required BMP files for your aircraft or scenery. You can also see that I changed the default backup location so I don't have to set it every time I open the program.

 

You'd think you'd get refunded for all this work developers didn't do.

I had a few bmp's that converted but haven't noticed any problems, However, to be safe, I'll set the configuration

 

I went through and converted all the orbx scenery. I have one particular flight that will OOM every time. Few it after the optimization and had over 700mb left at landing!

 

Now trying to figure out the best way to handle any updates. Probably just rerun the optimizer.

 

Vic

From what I understand, bmp files are already ignored.

If I look in KATL by is, I can see a lot of bmps, and I used texture optimizer on that scenery.

I thought the whole point of P3D moving stuff onto the GPU side was to make it more VAS efficient. It has to be P3D though, because I don't see these reports in FSX(SE).

 

 

The only files that are worth editing are third party uncompressed (32bit) bmp or dds files and it is only worth resizing files that are 4096x4096 and sometimes 2048x2048.

 

Don't you need to be careful here ... I thought some 3rd party devs would combine multiple images into a single texture in order to reduce draw calls?

 

For those making these adjustments, do you have HDR enabled?

 

What has me puzzled is why no one is using BC6H/BC7 compression which is targeted for DX11 API and HDR textures?  I've asked this question before and also asked LM but never got a response.

 

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh308952(v=vs.85).aspx

 

and

 

https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/BC6HBC7-DirectCompute-35e8884a

 

and

 

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh308955(v=vs.85).aspx

 

So what happened -- here we have a compression format designed specifically for DX11 and HDR but seems to be missing in action in P3D and 3rd party?  Wouldn't this solve the "it's too dark" as we'd have HDR data with sufficient color information to represent HDR correctly and a HDR compression format (BC6H/BC7) that is exceptional on the performance side.   

 

Anyway, great thread.

 

Cheers, Rob.