I still author with TGA since they are fast for refining the basics, but for 'finals' or developing specific image sets, I will use DDS.
DDS main benefits for me are for being able to control mip-maps, so you can resize/filter textures appropriately.
For instance, when a track texture moves off into the distance and has paint down the sides of the track, it blurs away, and we use AF to reduce the blurring. However, the texture also mips and softens. With DDS we can filter the texture down, but keep the edge of the paint lines sharper (if they are on a different layer say), and use those for the mips.
Or wire fences, we can keep them looking sharper instead of blurring up as badly.
It's subtle, but it all adds up to getting better image quality at no actual cost.
Doing a TGA > DDS conversion session won't take long, especially if the author has used atlas textures
I doubt Roggel was LiDAR. In all seriousness I can imagine it was authored relatively quickly hence the large amount of tiled texturing.
This is where secondary UVW mapping for light maps would be nice, as we could bake a load of shading into the map with a 2048x2048 atlas for example.
Or up the vert count and add vert lighting baked in. That would 'dirty' it up plenty.
All that said, with SSAO now becoming powerful (latest Frostbite engine) and fast, it might be that we just run AO in real time to give us that nice shaded/dirty look.
Hmmm
Dave
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