Feature suggestion

[nicholson_bruce]

I'm probably an atypical user since I work with massive amounts of scenery and AI texture files. However, that is the reason I chose Texture Doctor. It allows me to see everything, or just what I want, in a nice concise viewpoint.

The way Texture Doctor currently starts up is very cumbersome for me. The typical FS user probably wouldn't notice much of a delay in waiting for the program to initialize. However, with massive texture sets, collecting textures finishes at 48 seconds, building the list finishes at 2 mins 44 secs, and collecting image information finishes at 10 mins 24 seconds (this is with an optimized, defragmented system).

OK, so I have to wait a little over 10 minutes for TD to initialize, but it is worth it to have access to all of my textures in one place.

Then I encounter an issue. I add some new scenery or AI aircraft and I want to check the textures. There is no way to refresh the list. I have to close the program and restart, waiting an additional 10 mins for just a few new textures. I do this 6 times and I've burned an hour just waiting on the program to start.

My suggestion is to add a refresh button and have it linked to the texture folders that are selected in the Texture folders listing. When I add new textures, I only need to ensure the appropriate folders are selected and click refresh to get updated texture names in the lower window.

To follow this a step further, why not make this feature part of the initialization. The user starts the program, the collecting textures initializes and then a message tells the user to select the texture sets needed. If the user knows specifically what textures folders are needed, the user highlights those needed in the upper window, clicks the refresh button, then the program proceeds on just those folders. If the user wants all folders, the user clicks the Select all button, then the refresh button and they get what the current program produces. It's important the the refresh button clear the lower window so the user can randomly work on different texture folders.

I understand that this adds some complexity to the use of the program, and some people will be confused by the operation. With proper messages indicating what needs to be done, most users should have no problems.

In the end, people with large data sets, can target just the folders they want and save a tremendous amount of time waiting for the data to initialize.

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Another item I would find helpful is to list the file size in the lower window. The reason is that it makes it is easy to find corrupted textures. For example, if I have a series of DXT3 files, all 512x512, and 16 bpp, they should all have the same file size of 256kb (257kb with alpha channel). If I see that one file is 239kb, that is an indication of a problem, most likely a corrupted file.

As you know corrupted texture files lead to crashes when that texture is loaded by FS. When someone has thousands of textures, it can be quite a task to find the corrupted texture. Texture Doctor would be perfect since collections of textures could all be examined at one time for format, size, bpp, and file size. The suspect files can then be identified by the texture name and folder.

[Support]

Thanks for the suggestions, both added to the to do list!

[gladsonmoreira]

The FlightSimTools can improve this Texture Doctor to inform us if the texture files have alpha and mip...
Some add-on textures don't have it and kill the msfs frame rates...
The Texture Doctor can detect it and create alpha and mips in lot for us ?!?
It will be very good improvement!!!