You gain (or rather loose)  file size, and loading time. DXT is a compression, so files are smaller, and load quicker and may exhibit higher frame rates. However, you also loose quality with the compression, so I usually stick to 32Bit (except for AI use where small files are most uselful)

Thanks for adding that, i never checked the differences, I have sometimes noticed a slight difference, and you have to be more careful when repainting becuase if you repeatedly edit / compress / decompress / edit / compress..... then your files get really mucked up!

i have discovered that you will lose a great deal of image quality if you don't resize your texture image to a power of 2... (512x512, 1024x512, etc) because DXTBMP or any other converter will have to do that for you, and it doesn't resize very well...

so always use powers of 2 for image sizes... that will keep images crisp even with compression...

c ya

Moach

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Going by what it says in FSDS2 Help I don't think this is always the case.

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I think you will find that Extended BMP formats don't make much difference to the zipped file size. Compressed formats cannot be compressed much further, if at all, by zipping them up. Try zipping a JPEG. With some careful thought over texture sizes & formats the size of the average download could be considerably reduced.

For designers, planning the textures properly could reduce it further. I've seen many aircraft that use one texture for each part. This leads to a large number of textures, usually all hi-res & big files, when they could probably be grouped together on far less. The default textures are good examples of how it can be done economically. Some parts do not need large hi-res textures at all.