Airport scenery textures DXT1 ?

Hi Guys,

Is it worth all the trouble to systematically convert, e.g. DXT3 or higher quality airport textures to DXT1, while at the same time checking if their alpha channels have remained intact ? Will these then load faster because they have become smaller in size ?

Where are such textures de-compressed ? Via the graphics card's GPU and it's own directly related memory ?

Yes, I know that a detail and/or color price must then be paid but my question is only about the principle of possible faster loading speeds.

Regards and stay healthy.

Hans

DXT1 and DXT3 have exactly the same quality, the only difference is the 1 bit alpha channel (black/white) of the DXT1 format vs the 8 bit alpha channel (grayscale) in DXT3. If a DXT image does not include a grayscale alpha channel, DXT1 is actually the most efficient choice.

That said, I can't imagine that the small difference between these two will make any noticeable difference in loading times. And converting a DXT image into another format will often lead to unacceptable quality loss and sometimes rather obvious artifacts.

DXT textures are usually decompressed in the video card itself, that's why MS used them.

Hope this helps,

Thanks again Tom for your clear explanation.

Hans