Hi everybody,
when I use Celestia I can't see any dss texture, but I can do it opening these images in common graphic editors as Photoshop or Infranview.
How is possible that?
There is a way to see these textures in Celestia too. I think that the problem is not my graphic card (Winfast 3D S325), otherwise I could not open and see this format in other applications.
Am I wrong?
Eugen
A (newbie) question about DSS files
Re: A (newbie) question about DSS files
I guess you mean DDS, not DSS...
For Celestia, the graphic card has to process DDS in hardware, which your card apparently can't do (it seems to be based on a NVidia TNT). Displaying these textures in a graphic program is a completely different matter because the texture is decompressed in software, and the graphic card only has to display the decompressed image.
It may be misleading that Celestia uncompresses JPG and PNG textures in software, but doesn't uncompress DDS textures - they are used without further processing (that's the reason why they load so much faster).
Harald
Anonymous wrote:when I use Celestia I can't see any dss texture, but I can do it opening these images in common graphic editors as Photoshop or Infranview.
How is possible that?
There is a way to see these textures in Celestia too. I think that the problem is not my graphic card (Winfast 3D S325), otherwise I could not open and see this format in other applications.
For Celestia, the graphic card has to process DDS in hardware, which your card apparently can't do (it seems to be based on a NVidia TNT). Displaying these textures in a graphic program is a completely different matter because the texture is decompressed in software, and the graphic card only has to display the decompressed image.
It may be misleading that Celestia uncompresses JPG and PNG textures in software, but doesn't uncompress DDS textures - they are used without further processing (that's the reason why they load so much faster).
Harald
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Guest
Thank you Harry,
so which format you suggest to use in Celestia? PNG? I have read that the quality of this format is near to DDS, but is a bit bigger of JPG. Right?
And, second question, should I download the textures in original PNG format or converting from DDS to PNG format works fine too?
That's because I have already a lot of .DDS textures in an another computer (which can manage DDS but unfortunately is much slower than the other one). Further, I see that much textures of Earth in hi-res are available in DDS format only. So, is conversion a good choice?
And, in this case, third question: Infranview can manage and convert easily DDS files to PNG, and can save from the original DDS the "transparent color" too.
But what is exactly "transparent color"? It is a color feature present in every DSS texture or only in specific textures in which is needed some "transparency" (e.g. in clouds maps)?
Thanks a lot in advance
Eugen
so which format you suggest to use in Celestia? PNG? I have read that the quality of this format is near to DDS, but is a bit bigger of JPG. Right?
And, second question, should I download the textures in original PNG format or converting from DDS to PNG format works fine too?
That's because I have already a lot of .DDS textures in an another computer (which can manage DDS but unfortunately is much slower than the other one). Further, I see that much textures of Earth in hi-res are available in DDS format only. So, is conversion a good choice?
And, in this case, third question: Infranview can manage and convert easily DDS files to PNG, and can save from the original DDS the "transparent color" too.
But what is exactly "transparent color"? It is a color feature present in every DSS texture or only in specific textures in which is needed some "transparency" (e.g. in clouds maps)?
Thanks a lot in advance
Eugen
PNG has "perfect" quality, i.e. it is identical to the original data. JPG is a bit worse (depends on what quality was selected when saving the JPG), and DDS is worst (quality-wise). The only reason to use DDS is for performance (which is MUCH better).Anonymous wrote:so which format you suggest to use in Celestia? PNG? I have read that the quality of this format is near to DDS, but is a bit bigger of JPG. Right?
The qualtiy of JPG is typically good enough so you won't see a difference to PNG, but the files are much smaller. So it's a pretty good choice in most cases, but JPG doesn't have an alpha-layer, which is needed for e.g. clouds. In short: it depends.
If the files aren't too big, you should download the PNG or JPG version.And, second question, should I download the textures in original PNG format or converting from DDS to PNG format works fine too?
Please keep in mind that your graphic card probably won't be able to handle textures with very high resolutions. One 4k texture needs about 25 MB of memory, that's why DDS is used, which only takes 1/6 (?) of this for the same resolution.That's because I have already a lot of .DDS textures in an another computer (which can manage DDS but unfortunately is much slower than the other one). Further, I see that much textures of Earth in hi-res are available in DDS format only. So, is conversion a good choice?
But what is exactly "transparent color"? It is a color feature present in every DSS texture or only in specific textures in which is needed some "transparency" (e.g. in clouds maps)?
Hey, you wrote DSS again - it's DDS
The transparency color (or more general the alpha layer) is only used in some textures. It's obviously used in cloud-maps, but it can also be used to mark areas with water in normal textures, so no separate specmap is needed (IIRC the default earth-texture makes use of this).
Harald
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Guest
