For those new to repainting

[OleBoy]

I posted a couple informational-type things that may be of interest, http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=29085

[Wing_Z]

Interesting - I knew the compression was lossy in DXT but this explains quite well how.
Some repaints with subtle shading grades would suffer badly in DXT3 then.

Having said that, in FS I don't spend hours mooning over the exact shade of grey to be found on my fast-moving airborne object.

I get truly twitchy switching to spot view and having to wait for the artwork to load.
So I convert everything to DXT3 which is a fair compromise between looks and texture load time.

[Wild Bill Kelso]

Hmmm - DXT3 of course makes perfect sense for aircraft observed from some distance (AI traffic), but in my eyes (literally!), the blurred thin objects (panel lines, cheatlines, lettering) and the multi-colour artefacts DXT3 creates don't look too well when taking a closer look.

So I keep my repaints done in 32bit - if anyone wants to compress them down, it's only a few mouseclicks via DXTBMP.

I think there is another good point for 32bit:
If anyone feels the need to take my repaints as a basis for his personal variations or improvements, he would get even worse artefacts and blurries once he'd save my DXT3 textures as DXT3 again.

If the loading time of 32bit takes too long, it's maybe your video card that needs some boost... :d

But thanks for the tutorial anyway, OleBoy!

Cheers,
Markus.

[Wing_Z]

Yes as I typed I could sense the repaint artists wincing! ;)
Markus you're right of course - painting in anything less than hi-res closes the door on adding high detail later.
But would re-saving a modified DXT3 result in further degradation of the original?
I didn't think it would.

I do think it's maybe time for a new video card - my very nice 8800 GTS got fried a while ago and I replaced it with a 250 GTS which is pretty mediocre I reckon.