Aaron's Oceana paints

[Felixthreeone]

Just a quick question for the texture gurus out there...I noticed that the textures Aaron Haase did for his oceana hornets are quite large in size (something like 4mb for the main one). I also noticed that the VFA-106 paints from the gladiators package were much smaller. I seem to have much more of a performance hit with Aaron's jets as opposed to just the 106 birds. Wondering how I can reduce the size to match the MAIW size textures? I don't have any photo editing software; is this something that I can accomplish with just windows paint? Or is there another tool available? Ideally I would like to have them as DDS textures but that is over my head lol...

[campbeme]

Just a quick question for the texture gurus out there...I noticed that the textures Aaron Haase did for his oceana hornets are quite large in size (something like 4mb for the main one). I also noticed that the VFA-106 paints from the gladiators package were much smaller. I seem to have much more of a performance hit with Aaron's jets as opposed to just the 106 birds. Wondering how I can reduce the size to match the MAIW size textures? I don't have any photo editing software; is this something that I can accomplish with just windows paint? Or is there another tool available? Ideally I would like to have them as DDS textures but that is over my head lol...

Aaron, did his paints as 32 bit format, which makes them very high quality, but is not the format FS9 and FSX is supposed to use.

FS9 format is DXT3 with mip maps and Alpha.
FSX format is DDS / DXT5 with mip maps and Alpha.

These correct to SDK formats will produce a texture of around 1mb to 1.5mb.

To convert them quickly you will need Image tool, and then you can run a batch file within your selected aircraft folder to convert your paints to the format you require in seconds. Then you will need a second program called DXTFixer to run over the same textures to correct the few alpha channels which image tool sometimes can damage.

There is a huge thread over at AIG on the process involved.

Something to remember is each time you convert your paints they degrade a tiny bit, so try to only do it once if you can.

[Felixthreeone]

Thanks for the response...where can I find these two tools? Are they relatively 'idiot-proof' lol?

[Felixthreeone]

Ok so I found dxtfixerx, on avsim. My problem now is that I cannot get image tool for FSX, as it says that it installs with the sdk, which I never installed. Is there a way to get the FSX version of image tool without the sdk? And can this batch-convert the textures for me?

[Ripcord]

Why not just get the SDK? There are so many other things you will eventually use it for.

Head on over to FS Deverloper, if you aren't already signed up over there, and get on the forums. They have a whole sub-section for installing the FSX SDK. And there is a Wiki.

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.p ... _%28FSX%29

If I can do it, anybody can.