DirectDraw Surface

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Direct Draw Surface ( DDS ) is a file format introduced by Microsoft (extension .dds ) for the optimization and storage of textures or cube maps , which was first introduced in DirectX 7.0. From version 8.0, volume textures can also be saved. Mipmaps are also supported for most formats . The format is relatively space-saving and can be created with numerous programs (including those from Nvidia and Microsoft). In addition, plug-ins are available for various graphics programs (e.g. for GIMP and Adobe Photoshop ) which allow export to the DDS format. With the ARB texture compression extension , the format can also be used in OpenGL .

The DDS format was developed by Microsoft to increase the speed of games without sacrificing details. It is often used in computer games or benchmarks because it can be loaded into graphics memory quickly and because of the mipmaps it offers fast display of 3D graphics.

DDS has the following formats (see S3 Texture Compression ):

  • DXT1
  • DXT2
  • DXT3
  • DXT4
  • DXT5

DDS offers transparency, so DXT1 (version 1) can e.g. B. 1 bit (2 colors) represent alpha or transparency and DXT2 can already represent 4 bits, which is sufficient for computer games in many cases.