Talk:S3 Texture Compression

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DXT1 Information is Incorrect

At the end of this section, the author specifically states, "DXT1 does not store alpha data enabling higher compression ratios." This is incorrect. Alpha information is always stored in DXT1-compressed textures as one bit (on/off), whether or not the texture is transparent. In DXT1C (non-transparent) textures, the alpha-bit is always on; thus, the pixels are opaque. In DXT1A (transparent) textures, the alpha-bit may be on or off. If it is off, the color data is arbitrarily black (R:0, G:0, B:0). Someone with authority please do the research and correct this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.212.219.148 (talk) 14:43, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Correction: technical information is available here: [1]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.212.219.148 (talk) 16:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

S3TC bug in Nvidia

Wasn't the S3TC bug fixed in GF3 and all later GF models? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.81.194.106 (talk) 16:31, August 30, 2007 (UTC)

S3TC Compression

I think there should be an a separate article on texture compression (like in the German wikipedia). Now texture compression is just a redirect to S3TC. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.230.30.158 (talk) 20:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, info about compression algorithms would be interesting.Nigels (talk) 23:35, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Industry adoption of S3TC and OpenGL

note: the following was copied from User talk:NJM
most DirectX 6 accelerators (Rage128Pro, Riva TNT2, Voodoo 3, Matrox G400) didn't support s3tc in hardware. (Rage128Pro only had software emulation, others listed didn't support at all). At that time game support was questionable. Although S3 announced many D3D titles supporting S3TC, they didn't get benefit from it. Tim Sweeny, the Unreal Tournament developer said that UT will not support S3TC in D3D due to inefficient D3D realisation, and it's support was only implemented some years later.

And OpenGL, as industry standart interface, is relevant to industry adoption of its supported features -- Ilya K 20:49, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I asked some Mesa GL / Xorg programmers about this and their consensus was that the tendency with OpenGL is for IHVs to come up with new functionality, add it to their hardware and then get around to writing the GL extension. In the specific case of S3TC, industry adoption was sort of inevitable. Everybody wanted compressed textures, the competitors to S3TC (FXT1 and VQ) weren't as good, and then Microsoft decided to require it in DirectX 6, which was the final straw (so to speak). --NJM 01:25, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

License fees

What patent license fees (if any) does S3 require when using open source libraries such as squishor nVidia's Texture Tools, both released under the MIT license? Specifically, what about use on systems such as Windows or Mac OS that are already licensed? --Cryptognome (talk) 20:45, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]