Best texture format to use for OpenMW specific mods?

Questions specific to OpenMW-CS can be asked, and content development related topics can be discussed here
Post Reply
mattwla
Posts: 59
Joined: 17 Jul 2017, 14:45

Best texture format to use for OpenMW specific mods?

Post by mattwla »

So it seems that I am not limited to .dds when making OpenMW mods. I tried a jpeg and it worked fine. Which has me thinking:

If I were to make a mod specifically for OpenMW, what would be the ideal texture format to use? Should I stick with dds? Or should I branch out to jpeg or something else?

I guess performance is of utmost importance, I don't see myself cranking out any hi-fidelity content.

Thanks,
User avatar
AnyOldName3
Posts: 2667
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: Best texture format to use for OpenMW specific mods?

Post by AnyOldName3 »

The compression formats used in DDS files are natively supported by modern GPUs, so you can literally just copy the file from disk to VRAM and magically it'll work, usually even faster than if the texture was uncompressed, too, as memory accesses are smaller and more localised. There are plenty of guides on the internet comparing the file size, quality and performance of the various formats DDS can contain, so you can look those up to find out which is right for any individual texture.

Any other compressed format has to be decompressed in main memory and then sent to the GPU as an uncompressed bitmap. This saves disk space versus using an uncompressed format but is obviously slower. It shouldn't matter much for a few textures at the kind of resolution Morrowind's typically are, but more contemporary games would be completely hampered by this.
mattwla
Posts: 59
Joined: 17 Jul 2017, 14:45

Re: Best texture format to use for OpenMW specific mods?

Post by mattwla »

So it sounds like sticking to DDS, but looking more into the pros/cons of each DDS compression format is the path to take.

Thanks!
User avatar
lysol
Posts: 1513
Joined: 26 Mar 2013, 01:48
Location: Sweden

Re: Best texture format to use for OpenMW specific mods?

Post by lysol »

Yes, DDS is more or less the standard format for most games AFAIK, and this is for a reason really.
User avatar
psi29a
Posts: 5355
Joined: 29 Sep 2011, 10:13
Location: Belgium
Gitlab profile: https://gitlab.com/psi29a/
Contact:

Re: Best texture format to use for OpenMW specific mods?

Post by psi29a »

DDS is a container, not a format. It can contain either raw (uncompressed) textures or compressed via S3TC (using different schemes). The hardware doesn't care what the container is, it can be DDS or KTX. What's important is the format of the texture.

S3TC is not universally supported in modern GPUs... for example the VC4 and VC5 in the Raspberry Pi. It is supported by the majority of gaming GPUs however.

Raspberry Pi for example does support other formats such as ETC1 and ETC2.

Another example of a container is KTX, Khronos's version of DDS. This is usually coupled with ETC1 and ETC2 compression schemes to avoid S3TC. Now that S3TC is expired, this is likely now less important.

So you can pick: DDS or KTX as containers, but what matters is what compression (or if any) that you will use on the texture. Both are used to directly load textures into GPU memory if the GPU accepts the format of the texture.
User avatar
lysol
Posts: 1513
Joined: 26 Mar 2013, 01:48
Location: Sweden

Re: Best texture format to use for OpenMW specific mods?

Post by lysol »

...

Yeah, what he said.
Post Reply