Decals in .dds and camera views

[+Menrva]

Hi all. Does anyone know if the game reads decals in the .dds format (of course after correcting the relevant .ini files in each skin folder)? I have a "rather large" mod folder of over 60GB, most if not all bitmaps were converted to .jpeg, but the decals folder alone is at least 30GB big, and I hate that.

 

Second question: do you know where I can change the camera zoom in and zoom out values for each aircraft? For instance, unlike the stock Thirdwire aircraft, some 3rd party aircraft have some issues with the external camera views, if you zoom in too much you can see the "interior" of such aircraft.

 

P.S.: for those who are wondering why my personal mod is 60GB, all I can tell is that I have combined most of the greatest mods ever released for SF2 (Full-5 Merged - none of the DLCs): TSF2, ODS, OTC, KAW, NATO Fighters, SF2V Expansion, Falklands mod and so on. I thank all the modders here at CombatAce, thanks to their efforts Strike Fighters is becoming something more, a Cold War anthology.

[Wrench]

ONLY 60gigs? I have ONE mods folder of that size, and it's probably larger. To say nothing of the other 8 ....

Might be time to invest in a 1 terabyte (or larger) HD. The WD Caviar Black 1t I bought 2 years ago for 120 USD is not 70 USD at Best Buy.

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I don't thing the game will read dds decals. The engine is set up for tgas.. However, it costs nothing to test the conversion

[+Menrva]

It is only 60GB because I removed all the unnecessary files and converted the .bmp to .jpeg (I hate bitmaps taking all that space, jpegs are much better if the conversion is done right without loss of quality). Of course I'm planning to buy a new HD. BTW, good choice Wrench. I also have a WD external HD. That's where I store SF2 mods and backups.

 

What about the camera views? Tomorrow I'll post my results about .dds decals.

[Wrench]

sorry, I don't remember the camera view thingy!   I know there's a way, but can't remember (old age, ya know!!)

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the Caviar Black 1T is my main drive; it replaced the original when it died. 5 year warranty can't be beat (and having EXTRA large externals is a must, just for standard backing ups -- I need a new one, as my 1t external is nearly full)

[+Menrva]

I've tried and it works, as long as one adds the ".dds" extension to each decal file listed in the decal.ini. This might be useful for those who would like to conserve space on their HD. However converting dds to tga also means that you will lose image quality, much more noticeable than the conversion from bmp to jpeg. I wonder if there's another alternative to tga and dds formats.

[+Brain32]

Interesting I tried this but it didn't work, decals do show up but the numbering does not work, also make sure you convert to proper dds format I never lost any detail by conversion...

[+Menrva]

I didn't pay attention to the numbering so I guess you're right, maybe I'll have to stick to tgas.

 

If you open both the tga and the dds files in a program like Paint.NET and you compare them, you'll notice that there is a slight loss of quality in the latter. If you zoom in you'll see that some small parts of the decal have dots of purple-ish colour, this happens with every dds file I've seen.

 

BTW now I'd like to know what software do you use for conversions. Time ago I used Paint.NET, now I discovered XnView, it's better if you need to convert large quantities of files at the time. Unfortunately a dds plug-in that I have for Photoshop Elements doesn't work on my system, the program crashes and I don't know why.

Edited August 12, 2014 by blaze95

[+Soulfreak]

I use the nvidia Plugin for Photoshop and it works like a Cham.

[+Menrva]

I got the nvidia plugin. It works and has a lot of functions. Thanks for the tip.