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Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.
Aero L-39 Albatros
- Thread starter Nick C
- Start date
peter12213
FSX Acceleration!
Wow thats cool mate!:ernae: Some day I'll get to one of those massive American airshows, and I just can't wait I can almost smell the burgers burning lol!
wilycoyote4
Charter Member
Yes sir, seems you've been to one, the whiffs of burgers burning nicely precisely. Yup, that's true, as I know airshows. It's waiting in line to buy one that wears ya out. LOL:ernae:
skulleader
Charter Member
Hello,
For some months I work with the DXTBMP software but when I save my textures in DDS DXT1 but I noted problems of compression.
How you are several members to create skins for L-39, could you say to me with which software you work ?
At the moment I work on the texture L39Ext11 but when I save this file I have problem of compression, I noticed problems of pixels....
You could help me ?
PS: Sorry for my poor English......
Skulleader.
For some months I work with the DXTBMP software but when I save my textures in DDS DXT1 but I noted problems of compression.
How you are several members to create skins for L-39, could you say to me with which software you work ?
At the moment I work on the texture L39Ext11 but when I save this file I have problem of compression, I noticed problems of pixels....
You could help me ?
PS: Sorry for my poor English......
Skulleader.
ZsoltB
Charter Member
skulleader
Charter Member
Hello,
Some hours ago I discovered that my green cockpit (Russian) that I have upload @ Flightsim.com meets problems....
When I've created this cockpit which contains 23 files of textures, I saved with this option: DDS DXT1, but if you downloaded and installed this green cockpit you have many pixels because there is too much compression.
There are some minutes I re-saved my 23 textures for the green cockpit (Russian) with this new option: DDS 888-8 32 Bits and the result is perfect but these textures change of 500 ko to 5000 ko, size too big !!!
I would want upload this new cockpit so that you can download it but these 23 textures have a global size of "100 Mo" and I can not the uploader.
I noticed that all the skins which you create are perfect, please could you gives me the name of the software that you used and the format of your save that you used, without this information I can not upload my new version of the green cockpit (Russian).
I downloaded Yago's skin: HUAF L-39ZA #119.
And its files: L39VC11.dds, L39VC12.dds et L39VC13.dds has a size of 513 Kb and the quality of the skin is perfect.
With my new green cockpit my same textures that Yago has a size of 5642 Kb and my quality is perfect also but my files are really too big !!!
I join you some screens to explain you my problem and look at the leather seat:
My old green cockpit (many pixel, DDS DXT1):
My new green cockpit without pixel, DDS 888-8 32 Bits:
My old green cockpit (files small size) DDS DXT1:
My new green cockpit (files big size) DDS 888-8 32 Bits:
Please can you help me beacuse it's a real nightmare for me ?
A great thank's in advance for all.
Skulleader.
Some hours ago I discovered that my green cockpit (Russian) that I have upload @ Flightsim.com meets problems....
When I've created this cockpit which contains 23 files of textures, I saved with this option: DDS DXT1, but if you downloaded and installed this green cockpit you have many pixels because there is too much compression.
There are some minutes I re-saved my 23 textures for the green cockpit (Russian) with this new option: DDS 888-8 32 Bits and the result is perfect but these textures change of 500 ko to 5000 ko, size too big !!!
I would want upload this new cockpit so that you can download it but these 23 textures have a global size of "100 Mo" and I can not the uploader.
I noticed that all the skins which you create are perfect, please could you gives me the name of the software that you used and the format of your save that you used, without this information I can not upload my new version of the green cockpit (Russian).
I downloaded Yago's skin: HUAF L-39ZA #119.
And its files: L39VC11.dds, L39VC12.dds et L39VC13.dds has a size of 513 Kb and the quality of the skin is perfect.
With my new green cockpit my same textures that Yago has a size of 5642 Kb and my quality is perfect also but my files are really too big !!!
I join you some screens to explain you my problem and look at the leather seat:
My old green cockpit (many pixel, DDS DXT1):
My new green cockpit without pixel, DDS 888-8 32 Bits:
My old green cockpit (files small size) DDS DXT1:
My new green cockpit (files big size) DDS 888-8 32 Bits:
Please can you help me beacuse it's a real nightmare for me ?
A great thank's in advance for all.
Skulleader.
Lotus
Charter Member
Hey guys. All of these repaints are awesome, and I'm quite amazed by what you've all come up with. I feel very inadequate in my own painting skills now, hehe.
However I'm sorry to say that I need to be a party pooper here for a minute and talk about texture sizes and bit depths and some of the problems this can cause, because the L-39 does things quite differently than most addons.
The plane gets its performance largely by using texture space rather than polygons for detail and this means it uses a LOT of texture space compared to other aircraft, typically 10-17mb for the external and upwards of 30 mb for the cockpit, and this is with a combination of DXT1 base textures and DXT5 specular maps.
Making the L-39's textures 24 or 32 bit can cause problems 256 mb video cards and even some 512mb cards, depending on scenery complexity and other addons a user might have, and can also degrade the performance of the airplane noticeably, especially in multiplayer. A fully 32 bit L-39 will end up using almost half of a 256mb card's budget just for the plane, and if one of these things shows up in multiplayer it's going to be "game over" for scenery. Whenever an aircraft demands more texture space it gets priority over the scenery tiles, and the scenery is forced to drop at least 1 mip level to make room, resulting in a blurry mess. Also the L-39 caches almost all of the cockpit textures into the external model to prevent that long VC texture load time when you switch from an outside view back to the cockpit. This means that all of the plane's textures are loaded all the time, about 45-55mb worth of data, depending on the plane.
It also takes FSX a lot longer to load these textures, and sometimes trying to load that much texture at once can crash the sim to the desktop. On most addons which use less texture space you can easily get away with 32 bit everything, but unfortunately in my quest to make the L-39 as high performance as possible, without sacrificing detail, I pretty much made this option unavailable. Because the L-39 uses about 10 base textures, plus spec maps, and bumps, any jump in size per texture multiplies the vram demand significantly.
Anyway, if you're working on a repaint please try to be mindful of the texture bit depths and try to stick to the same method I used for the planes in the package whenever you can, at the very least for multiplayer concerns. Yes DXT1 isn't going to look quite as pretty as 32 bit, but until everyone has a 2 GB videocard FSX forces many trade-offs unfortunately.
If you feel you have to go full 32 bit to get the quality you desire, then maybe there's an option to save as 24 bit, and ditch the alpha channel. That should save some space with no loss in quality.
Also DXT5 and DXT1 use the same compression algorithm for textures, the only difference is that DXT5 contains a full alpha channel. Making anything DXT5, except the spec maps, will just consume more vram for no gain. In fact I usually find that DXT1 gives better quality image compression than DXT5.
Again thanks for all the wonderful repaints so far, and I'm sorry for bringing this up. I certainly don't want to hinder any repaint efforts or flat out demand that things be done a certain way, but I felt I had to mention these potential side effects.
Cheers guys,
-Mike
However I'm sorry to say that I need to be a party pooper here for a minute and talk about texture sizes and bit depths and some of the problems this can cause, because the L-39 does things quite differently than most addons.
The plane gets its performance largely by using texture space rather than polygons for detail and this means it uses a LOT of texture space compared to other aircraft, typically 10-17mb for the external and upwards of 30 mb for the cockpit, and this is with a combination of DXT1 base textures and DXT5 specular maps.
Making the L-39's textures 24 or 32 bit can cause problems 256 mb video cards and even some 512mb cards, depending on scenery complexity and other addons a user might have, and can also degrade the performance of the airplane noticeably, especially in multiplayer. A fully 32 bit L-39 will end up using almost half of a 256mb card's budget just for the plane, and if one of these things shows up in multiplayer it's going to be "game over" for scenery. Whenever an aircraft demands more texture space it gets priority over the scenery tiles, and the scenery is forced to drop at least 1 mip level to make room, resulting in a blurry mess. Also the L-39 caches almost all of the cockpit textures into the external model to prevent that long VC texture load time when you switch from an outside view back to the cockpit. This means that all of the plane's textures are loaded all the time, about 45-55mb worth of data, depending on the plane.
It also takes FSX a lot longer to load these textures, and sometimes trying to load that much texture at once can crash the sim to the desktop. On most addons which use less texture space you can easily get away with 32 bit everything, but unfortunately in my quest to make the L-39 as high performance as possible, without sacrificing detail, I pretty much made this option unavailable. Because the L-39 uses about 10 base textures, plus spec maps, and bumps, any jump in size per texture multiplies the vram demand significantly.
Anyway, if you're working on a repaint please try to be mindful of the texture bit depths and try to stick to the same method I used for the planes in the package whenever you can, at the very least for multiplayer concerns. Yes DXT1 isn't going to look quite as pretty as 32 bit, but until everyone has a 2 GB videocard FSX forces many trade-offs unfortunately.
If you feel you have to go full 32 bit to get the quality you desire, then maybe there's an option to save as 24 bit, and ditch the alpha channel. That should save some space with no loss in quality.Also DXT5 and DXT1 use the same compression algorithm for textures, the only difference is that DXT5 contains a full alpha channel. Making anything DXT5, except the spec maps, will just consume more vram for no gain. In fact I usually find that DXT1 gives better quality image compression than DXT5.
Again thanks for all the wonderful repaints so far, and I'm sorry for bringing this up. I certainly don't want to hinder any repaint efforts or flat out demand that things be done a certain way, but I felt I had to mention these potential side effects.
Cheers guys,
-Mike
Hi Mike, your aircraft is a must in a serious sim-hangar, but I must say that my Radeon X1650 works better with DXT3 or DXT5 than DXT1. With this type there is no blurr effect, with DXT1 or DDS 882-8 32 Bits yes. I have learned this with your aircraft, than in standard configuration has all files in DXT1. Well, from when I have converted all in DXT3, my resolution is better, more crisp... So better that al my aircraf now are in DXT-3. I'm no expert, but I believe that DXT1 is too compression rate: surely my video card do not have time to decompress all in time!!!!
Regards,
Luca
Regards,
Luca
B
Blondie
Guest
Hungarian L-39zo interior of cockpit:
skulleader
Charter Member
Dear Mike,
I think that all the FSX's community will be unanimous, you created a real jewels with your addon.
This plane is a MUST !!!!!
There are some minutes I saved all my textures in DXT5 and it is much better that DXT1, now my "green cockpit" (TextureTopaze) is really TOP like your addon.
I think like Peritas, it's true you have created a MUST.
A great thank's for this addon.......
PS: I'm sorry for my poor English, Best regards.
Skulleader.
I think that all the FSX's community will be unanimous, you created a real jewels with your addon.
This plane is a MUST !!!!!
There are some minutes I saved all my textures in DXT5 and it is much better that DXT1, now my "green cockpit" (TextureTopaze) is really TOP like your addon.
I think like Peritas, it's true you have created a MUST.
A great thank's for this addon.......
PS: I'm sorry for my poor English, Best regards.
Skulleader.
ZsoltB
Charter Member
Hello Olivier,
Use the DXT1 bitmap manipulator
http://www.btinternet.com/~mnwright/programs/dxtbmp.htm
:ernae:
Your Friend Zsolt
skulleader
Charter Member
Hello Zsolt 
A great thank's for you link, now I've a last version of this software and for your MP (photos)......
PS:
I go to upload on "Flightsim" the last version and upgrade of my greencockpit "texturetopaze"
Best regards, Olivier :ernae:
A great thank's for you link, now I've a last version of this software and for your MP (photos)......
PS:
I go to upload on "Flightsim" the last version and upgrade of my greencockpit "texturetopaze"
Best regards, Olivier :ernae:
Quixoticish
Charter Member
Landing gear ? What,s wrong with the pilots ? Are the default ones better ?
Has this repaint been uploaded anywhere yet?
G
gajit
Guest
Just started this one. A lot more to do but it works well...
