File Format for P3D ?

[scottb613 1,188]

Hi Folks,

 

Quick question - what's the "best" (quality vs performance) format for textures in P3D ? Typically - I've been converting my 32 Bit BMP's to DDS... I've noticed many of the payware vendors leaving the files in BMP format - yet they are unreadable in a normal image viewer - what are they using BMP's with DXT5 compression ???

 

Thanks...

 

Regards,
Scott

[jeansy 341]

since converting to fsx in 06 ive been doing all my paints as dds dxt5

 

bmp formatted textures arent  24bit hence why they arent view-able in a image viewer as theyre either a dxt or 32bit compression

[N400QW 205]

Seems like DXT3 if I recall? DXT.bmp was the utility of choice.

[scottb613 1,188]

Hi Folks,

 

Thanks for the responses - yeah - I had thought DXT3 was what we used in FS9 - I didn't know it worked in FSX - I've been using DDS with DXT5 - but as we all know - compression leads to loss - I had thought we might have had an option for a higher quality save...

 

I've been using ConvImX - I think the program may have been written by the same guy who did DXT/BMP utility - some of the advantages are that it can process files in bulk and it has more options...

 

Appreciate the help !!!

 

Regards,
Scott

[jeansy 341]

I gave up on dxtbmp a long time ago, I went thru a stage where I used imagetools.exe in the sdk,

 

now I use nvidiatools without any concerns of loss of quality, this includes 4096x4096 files that the others struggled with

[scottb613 1,188]

Hi Mathew,

 

"Nvidia Tools" ??? Now that is a new one on me - - let me go poke around and see what that's all about...

 

Thanks...

 

Regards,

Scott

[jeansy 341]

Hi Mathew,

 

"Nvidia Tools" ??? Now that is a new one on me - - let me go poke around and see what that's all about...

 

Thanks...

 

Regards,

Scott

 

Noting Adobe are giving CS2 away for free, its a photoshop plug that allows you to save psd or psp layerd files directly to dds format with no compression distortion

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop