DDS in Dolphin for Android

[Ivan89el]

Is it possible to implement support for DDS textures (bc1-bc7) on the Android version of the emulator? Would it be faster when playing with texture packs?

[JosJuice]

The problem here is that the typical Android device doesn't contain a hardware DDS decoder. (In case you have an Android device with a hardware DDS decoder, it should work already.) It would be possible to implement software decoding for DDS, but this wouldn't give you the advantages over PNG as hardware DDS decoders do.

[Ivan89el]

(09-15-2020, 05:37 AM)JosJuice Wrote: The problem here is that the typical Android device doesn't contain a hardware DDS decoder. (In case you have an Android device with a hardware DDS decoder, it should work already.) It would be possible to implement software decoding for DDS, but this wouldn't give you the advantages over PNG as hardware DDS decoders do.

Could you tell us which Android devices have a hardware DDS decoder?

[JosJuice]

(09-15-2020, 05:53 AM)Ivan89el Wrote: Could you tell us which Android devices have a hardware DDS decoder?

http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/listdevicescoverage.php?optimalformat=BC7_SRGB_BLOCK&platform=android

For practical purposes, basically only the Nvidia Shield TV.

[AnyOldName3]

BC7 is setting the bar a little high. Pretty much any modern Android phone should have basic support for BC1, 2 and 3, the formats under the expired S3TC patent.

[JosJuice]

(09-15-2020, 07:30 AM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: BC7 is setting the bar a little high. Pretty much any modern Android phone should have basic support for BC1, 2 and 3, the formats under the expired S3TC patent.

Most texture packs that use DDS nowadays are using BC7, which is why I picked that. However, BC3 isn't actually doing better than BC7: http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/listdevicescoverage.php?optimalformat=BC3_SRGB_BLOCK&platform=android

[AnyOldName3]

Looks like I was wrong. I was under the impression that OpenMW for Android was just passing Morrowind's S3TC textures directly, but it's setting the environment variable to decode them in software instead.

[Ivan89el]

Maybe you should take a closer look at ETC2 and ASTC textures?