Celestia Forums

I have a 256meg Radeon 9600XT in winXP sp2, and I've been trying to get the addons that use the dds textures to work ... they load, and you can see the labels but no image at all.

I'm using the current catalyst 4.9 driver from ATI.

the m31 addon (9.4meg one) from celestia motherload is one example.

Can anybody please help as alot of celestia addon textures appear to be dds.

Hi,

I have the same problem with an ATI RAGE 128M under Windows 98.
When I install "Blue Marble" add-on, a blank earth is displayed when activating the "Alternate surface".
If I switch to "Normal" surface, it's Ok.

I have the latest drivers for my graphics card.

Is there a known problem on ATI cards with DDS format ?

I know ATI's RAGE cards don't support DDS format. Their design is just too old. (I used to have one in my system at work.)

However, ATI Radeon 9600 cards certainly ought to.

What is the maximum texture size that a 9600 can handle?

One way to find the size of the card's texture buffer is to open Celestia's Help menu and select "OpenGL Info". Note the value on the line that starts with
Max texture size:

On my Nvidia FX 5200, it says
Max texture size: 4096

However, many older cards say
Max texture size: 1024

Then check the dimensions of the surface texture image. When used for the surface of a DSC Nebula object, the image must be smaller than the size of the card's texture input buffer.

In the last example above, textures larger than 1K only work for Celestia's internal spherical objects (e.g. planets). Celestia knows how to cut larger textures up into smaller pieces so they can be used on planets. It cannot do the same for any other 3D objects. Textures used for them must fit in the buffer.

Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.

Renderer: RADEON 9600 XT x86/MMX/3DNow!/SSE

Version: 1.5.4582 WinXP Release

Max simultaneous textures: 8

Max texture size: 2048

WildCode,

The high resolution M31 doesn't work for you because
your 9600 has a maximum texture size of 2K
but the M31 addon contains a 4K surface texture image.

It doesn't fit.

If you want to be able to use 4K DDS textures, you'll need to upgrade your graphics card.

Unfortunately, I don't know which ATI cards can accept 4K textures. They don't seem to publish that information on their Web site.

Nvidia seems to be just as bad in providing that information, but I know most of their current cards do accept 4K textures: GeForce 4 Ti 4x00, FX 5xxx and GF 6xxx all do.

Sorry.

ok, looks like the texture was 4096x4096

ATI AIW 9600XT is what I have. 2K textures are it.

There is a file here http://www.shatters.net/~jim/files/downsize_DDS.zip that will downsize 4K to 2K, I haven't had a chance to try it yet as I just built a new computer and am recreating my Celestia folder for the upgrade.

Buggs