59 replies to this topic

[Corky Buchek]

So i guess now we have to convert them back?

bye bye upside down trees..

[Gypsy Baron]

Corky Buchek, on Oct 11 2006, 11:56 PM, said:

So i guess now we have to convert them back?

bye bye upside down trees..

As I read the info in another forum, the original textures were DTX5.
The conversion process was meant to convert them to DTX1a and then
back into the DDS format. I.E....they are now DTX1a, not DTX5, and
"right side up"...

  Paul

[Katahu]

Andydigital, on Oct 9 2006, 04:28 PM, said:

I thought the whole point of the exercise was to convert them to BMP's because they improve the frame rate, i.e. the bmp's are uncompressed and hence quicker to process.

Not really, DDS stands for Direct Draw Surface and communicates very well with Direct X [hence the term "direct draw"] thus allowing for better frames. If I remember correctly, I think Cyvr did the following steps in the other post:

1. Convert DDS DXT5 [five] to BMP DXT1 [one]
2. Convert BMP DXT1 [one] to DDS DXT1 [one]

[notice that DXT formats]

[Andydigital]

DDS converter 2 the program we have been using lets you convert from one DXT version to the other directly without having to convert to BMP first. So why did the tut tell us to convert to BMP if that wasn't the point, it never mentioned you need to convert them back again. And also the thread title is "converting dds to bmp"

[Katahu]

I'm just trying to point out what I remember from ANOTHER thread besides this one.

[Corky Buchek]

omg! my frames are INSANE NOW after i went back to DDS DXT1A!

Just one thing, now my trees have black triangles around them..., que pasa?

[Corky Buchek]

Heres a screen, hmm not letting me edit my above post.

[Katahu]

Obviousely, you screwed up somewhere along the line.

[Corky Buchek]

thanks for the HELP.

[alky]

Would using the autogen tweak and turning autogen off in the sim amount to the same frame rate increase as converting all the dds files?

[mollindz]

Corky Buchek, on Oct 12 2006, 06:17 PM, said:

omg! my frames are INSANE NOW after i went back to DDS DXT1A!

Just one thing, now my trees have black triangles around them..., que pasa?

I think what has happened is that when you converted the bitmaps back to .dds files, the alpha channel was lost (the portion of the digital info that makes part of the texture transparent).  DDS Converter 2 doesn't seem to support alpha information when converting .bmp to .dds (DXT1).  If you open the files with DXTBmp tool I bet you'll see the box for alpha channel is blank.

Maybe that's also why your FPS went up.  Your system isn't having to process alpha information on the vegetation textures.  I'm only guessing though.

Hope you get your trees back!

All the best, Rob

Edit:  Just noticed a link in Mango's pinned "FSX Tweak Collection" Thread that explains the whole thing a lot better, and offers a fix for the trees that preserves the alpha channel.
http://forums.avsim....55651&mode=full

Edited by mollindz, 13 October 2006 - 01:54 AM.

[Corky Buchek]

Thanks alot mollindz!

[Ashsimmonds]

VEry nice.

[curi]

Is verly low to convert BMP to DSS...

But is posible converto only tree archives and win a similar FPS?

[leite1987]

so after all, what should i do with the upside down trees??? someone plzzz...

[ac604]

How about some Admin clean up this mess?

This thread has encouraged me to register.. I've been playing FS games since I had a Commodore 64, and I was also totally blown away by the pathetic frame rates of FSX on my 3.75GHz P4HT, 1 GB, X1900 256MB PCI-Ex.

To solve all the problems people are having here...

1. Instead of bothering with BMP, do go from DDS to DDS, except copy the files into a new folder (yay, instant backup)
2. Look at all the settings in the Options window. Keep them the same EXCEPT make sure to turn ON the alpha channel checkbox.
3. When you've finished going through 1/4 of the files at a time so it doesn't shut down on you, you're not QUITE there yet.
4. Copy the BMP files that already exist in the original folder to your new folder (otherwise you'll only have the DDS files).
5. I did find two files in "l...something..tga..something" that didn't convert, but I ignored that.. don't see them. you can copy the original DDS's.

My end result was only a reduction to ~440MB, so I don't know how someone managed to get down to 130MB (maybe using the compression?)

After this, I did the the one Autogen tree patch and added the BufferPool lines to my FSX.CFG

voila. It works. OMG. I can actually play the game now. How come the ACE team can't do what 3 end users can? There should have been some way to make the game play acceptably for someone using "old" equipment like mine without reseting to FS2004 levels.

NO UPSIDE DOWN TREES, NO ALPHA CHANNEL ISSUES. How easy is that?

More rant in another thread....

Edited by ac604, 25 October 2006 - 09:24 PM.

[mickezzz]

Boring... I can only convert 15 files @ the time, otherwise it crash   . 2787/15= 185,5. So I have to convert 186 times . LAME... .

[JackHorner]

Can someone please tell me where the tree/autogen textures are located? I would like to just convert them and see if I get any difference in fps with more trees. I can't find their files.

Also I'm brand new to this whole converting thing and the main post does a good start but I would really like a full tutorial step by step on how to do this without screwing everything up. I have read the first post and the one a few above this one many times and it's still hard to understand.

One thing I cant figure out is this. Are the DDS files a companion to some BMP files? If I convert the DDS files to the DDS1? format is that all I need to do or do I need to mess with the bmp's.

I'm so confused. Will someone that knows what they are doing be gracious enough to help me learn this? I think this thread would be about 100 pages now if only people could understand it better.

Thanks in advance.

[mickezzz]

Yeah.. my FPS went up by 10FPS in some area's   . I think I know the reason why the DDS converter was crashing to desktop when coverting some files. I've installed the reduced tree textures, but I think DDS converter can't handle them and crashs'. However now I see some strange texture's on airfield vehicles, but it isn't anoying and you can see it only when you're close to them. I think it has to do with the alpha converting (I enabled Alpha in DDS converter).

Mick

[mustang60348]

I was able to convert ALL files at once by increasing the buffer size to 100,000.