Need to use D3DFMT_LIN_A8R8G8B8 instead of D3DFMT_A8R8G8B8 for textures to show correctly on Xbox 360 while this is undefined on the PC. LIN stands for Linear...

Question

Hi All,

In the Xbox 360 I found out that I have to use D3DFMT_LIN_[xxxxxxx] instead of just D3DFMT_[xxxxxxx] since the textures wouldn't work with D3DFMT_LIN on the 360. As the tite says the LIN part stands for Linear, the description between the D3DFMT_LIN and D3DFMT_ for the texutres is just that one format is linear one isn't.

So would anyone know why is this exactly?

Answer 1

Well on the 360 you have better access to the underlieing hardware. As such certain things that are done behind your back on the PC you have to be more explicit about on the 360. For best speed most textures will be "swizzled" to allow for rapid access by the graphics hardware. By choosing an _LIN format you are saying that actually your texture data is un-swizzled. The hardware will then use a slower backup path to handle the textures. On 360 you are best off using the functions provided to swizzle your texture and on PC just using the default. Compressed formats, which should be preferred over uncompressed, are always swizzled correctly by nature of the DXTC compression and decompression algorithm.

This question really ought not to be asked here, though.