DDS support in the codec pack?

[greggman]

Hello Axel,

Thank you so much for the codec pack.

I wrote a TGA plugin for Windows Explorer on 2000/XP several years ago. I sat down tonight to make a Vista / Window7 version but I was lucky enough that I thought I should see if someone else had already done it and I found yours. Thank you for saving me the trouble.

I added a link from my old plugin to yours. I hope it helps you out
http://greggman.com/pages/thumbplug_tga.htm

I wanted to ask if you had thought about adding a .DDS codec. Here's an open source decoder that might help you get started if you are interested.

http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/t ... iew=markup

A lot of game developers would really appreciate it if you happen to feel like doing it.

[Axel]

Thanks for the link to the codec pack. DDS was indeed already suggested. We have plans to support some CG formats in the future (Radiance and OpenEXR, to name the most likely), perhaps we can add DDS to that list. Together with TGA this would make for a nice "CG/GameDev" pack.

[notstrom]

I think for both, CG/GameDev,its important to have a proper way to display alpha-channels and png-transparency. I like the way how XnView handle that.
My image viewer at work does not support alpha-channels, it would be a time-saver if it could.

[Axel]

Alpha support is certainly important. FPV supports 8 and 16-bit alpha in 32 and 64-bit TIFF, 8-bit alpha in 32-bit PNG and also GIF transparency so handling alpha is not a problem, but being primarily a photographer-oriented image viewer it lacks a checkered background option, which is useful for "technical" viewing of semi-transparent images. Currently ones see the black background through translucent portions of the images, which is less than ideal for some uses.

EDIT: DDS is supported in the FastPictureViewer Codec Pack (many sub-variants of the format are supported and all sample images shipping with the DirectX SDK can be read).