Simviation Forums

ok i have been painting aircraft for a considerable time now but my latest one which has been for a VA will end up being nearly 10 meg in size...it seems every time i save the file with alpha channel in extended format that the file size is roughly about 4 meg and if theres multiple textures for a fuselage this can end up being pretty big

any ideas on how to reduce file size without loosing quality?

thanks

daz

The texture file size will depend on the resolution & format. If you know the resolution it should be possible to tell which format an Extended BMP is in by the file size. A 1024 x 1024 texture in DXT3 format like the FS2002/4 defaults should be 1.33 Mb.

PS. If you're worried about the zipped file size try zipping up the texture folder of your repaint. You might be surprised. Some Extended BMP formats compress more than others. Zipping a DXT3 texture might make little, if any, difference. The file size of a standard BMP & some other Extended formats is reduced considerably when zipped.

woah yeah i zipped it to a rar file and it went down to 600 kb thanks hagar. its still considerably larger when installed but seems to have no effect on performance so i think its ok

thanks again

daz

I use 1024 x 1024 textures for the YAS spitfires ( CFS2) and compress them to about 600K with DXT1 format.