HESH - FSX : DDS textures corrupted?

[M-Sauce]

Hello

I seem to have some performance issues in your HESH scenery. Upon further inspection, there seem to be some DDS textures in the main HESH texture folder that will not open with DXTBMP or ImageTool. A small list of some of the textures that won't open is listed below, but this list is not all inclusive - just some of the ones that won't open.

- FSDG_BusMap1.dds
- FSDG_BusMap1_lm.dds
- FSDG_Things_1.dds
- FSDG_Things_1_lm.dds
- All of the "HESH_Ground_C_XX.dds" textures.

... and many more. This is the only scenery that I have found with texture files that do not open for viewing. I think this might be why I am having performance issues and stutters.

What I have already done : I removed the installation via the windows control panel and made sure the HESH installation folders where removed from both Addon Scenery and SimMarket folders. Then, I re-downloaded the original zip file from SimMarket and re-installed it (choosing "run as admin", which I always use when installing software). Tried to view the same DDS textures and got the same error message as seen below:

ImageTool (FSX SDK) error message

Is anyone else having this same problem?

Thank you for your help with this.

[horst18519]

If you have performance issue, we would like to learn about them. We didn't have any reports about that yet. What settings do you use?

The error message has nothing to do with this though. The textures are just fine, else you wouldn't be able to see them in FSX.

[M-Sauce]

OK, so your reply leads me to believe that the textures not opening is intentional. That is unfortunate, since I wanted to improve performance by resizing some of them and converting them to smaller format. I find that you overuse DXT3 textures where DXT1 would suffice.

I can't do any of this if you make your textures unavailable to the user.

[M-Sauce]

FSX does not know DXT1. Even if it does not sound plausible at first, DXT1 gives only disadvantages in FSX, no advantages. This is due to the way FSX handles textures.
We do not prevent opening the DDS files though. The limitation is in fact an imagetool issue, that usually gives error messages if you want to open dds files. Try it with default dds files.

Interesting, did not know that about DXT1. Many sceneries, some of the better performing ones, use many formats, including DXT1.

Which software do you recommend to open the DDS files then? I have only used Imagetool and DXTBMP, have not come across a texture I could not open until now.

[horst18519]

I'm sorry, please disregard the quoted post, I deleted it while you quoted.

We need to look into this.

[horst18519]

We will release an update for HESH FSX in October. Due to my absence of my development PC I won't be able to do anything for the next 5 weeks, but afterwards we will pack the new, changed files together with a few other changes into an update that will also enable you to edit the textures (which will then hopefully not be needed anyway).

[andy1982]

Really looking forward to it!

[M-Sauce]

We will release an update for HESH FSX in October. Due to my absence of my development PC I won't be able to do anything for the next 5 weeks, but afterwards we will pack the new, changed files together with a few other changes into an update that will also enable you to edit the textures (which will then hopefully not be needed anyway).

Great to hear, looking forward to increased performance with this popular holiday spot, it sees a nice mix of traffic. Any chance you could implement the technology from Heraklion X to allow AI traffic to display properly with their shadows? That would be great.

Thanks