Stupid Question for the modelers in the house

[flewpastu]

This may be a dumb question BUT, I am using the program DXTBmp and starting messing around with some textures. My question is when I convert some BMP's to DDS DXT1 the file is much smaller (ie from 1meg size to half and then some) and then when I reload the texture in FSX and start flying there is no difference in the quality of the aircraft. In other words the aircraft looks the same but the size of the repaint is half the size. I saved almost 1 gig in size on my FSX hardive by converting the size of the files to dds DXt1. Am I missing something or is this good or bad. I backed up all the other textures just in case. I have noticed some improvment in FPS with some aircraft. I also looked at dds files that were saved as DXT3 or 5 with mipmaps and changed them to DXT1 with no mipmaps and the size of the repaint was considerably smaller but the quality looked to be about the same ?. Is this correct .

Thanks In Advance

Bill

[flewpastu]

Seems that MCDesigns answered the question the last time I had a similer question. Thanks Michael. Still I am curious as to why this is ?

Bill

[Chuck_Jodry-VJPL]

The difference is there is no alpha channel in a dds1, if the texture in question had no alpha channel in the first place
then there would be no visible effect , if the alpha was used for windows , or reflections then the dds.5 is needed

[flewpastu]

Is that a good thing or bad thing ? Does that effect FPS ?

Bill

[Chuck_Jodry-VJPL]

In the case of a substantial reduction in the texture load it must be a good thing , there are a number of models <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
that make use of 2048 x 2048 textures that would load faster if the textures were reduced to 1024 X 1024 and had the unused alpha channel removed for use in multiplayer situations and with older computers .<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
But if it’s just a question of a few megs then it’s not going to have a noticeable effect, though messing with <o:p></o:p>
the sim is part of the fun.. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>