Qestions regarding CDDS file format

[jermin]

I have recently bought FC2 and installed several mods/models/skins using Modman. But after that the game's FPS dropped to 20-30 level in Su-27 quick mission on my i7 3.6G + 3G DDR3 + GTX295, although I was using maximum graphics settings plus 8x AA and 8x AF (High Quality, Vsync on, RES 1280x1024, haven't done any config tweak yet).

 

I then checked the installed mods/models/skins and found majority of the textures installed are not in CDDS format. So I'm wondering whether I can change them all into CDDS format to improve FPS?

 

For example:

 

Mod Oxyd's and afterburner cone standard model for LO:FC2.0 contains following files:

 

FORSAG.tga.dds will be installed to Bazar\TempTextures\

forsag.LOM will be installed to Bazar\World\Shapes\

ns_forsage.tga will be installed to Bazar\TempTextures\

 

As you can see, one texture file is not in .dds format. Can I follow cosmonaut's CDDS guide to convert it to .dds to improve performance?

 

I did as the guide told and inserted the converted .CDDS file back to the mod pack in Modman's mod pack editor. But after I installed the new mod, the state for the new CDDS file was shown N/A.

 

Also, I've seen in the mod pack editor that there is a catalog file for FORSAG.tga.dds:

 

Bazar\World\WorldTexturesTGA.cdds

 

What does this catalog file do? Is it the cause of N/A state? Or is CDDS only for aircraft skins?

[Michelange]

Hi,

 

First of all :

- .dds is a single compressed texture (no need to pack it in a .cdds, you have to unpack it before)

- .cdds is a pack of several textures

 

- All textures in temptextures are loaded first then if LO does not find the texture he will look in the cdds packs one after one in the same order that they are listed in graphics.cfg

- If LO found the texture he need, he stop to search in the other cdds. That mean if you have another skin (with the same name) in another .cdds listed after, he will not load this one.

- Your FORSAG.tga.dds in Bazar\TempTextures\ will be loaded at first and not the FORSAG.tga in the .cdds.

- Putting the textures in TempTextures\ is a fast way to test textures w/o creating a .cdds

 

- FPS has nothing to do with .cdds or no .cdds :

The adventage to have .cdds is that LO will load the textures faster when your loading the mission.

 

And, yes you can put textures from TempTextures\ in a .cdds but you have to respect somme rules .BMP are in 24bits, .TGA have an Alpha channel. The size of the files have to be conform (1024x1024, 512x1024,512x512, 2048x2048 etc...). Some files in temptextures are not conform to this.

Edited June 7, 2011 by Michelange