The Microsoft DirectDraw Surface (.dds) file format is used to store textures and cubic environment maps, both with and without mipmap levels. This format can store uncompressed and compressed pixel formats, and is the preferred file format for storing DXTn compressed data. This file format is supported by the Microsoft DirectX Texture tool (DXTex Tool), as well as some third party tools, and by the Direct3D extensions (D3DX) library. In 3D computer graphics texture mapping, MIP maps (also mipmaps) are pre-calculated, optimized collections of bitmap images that accompany a main texture, intended to increase rendering speed and reduce artifacts. ... S3 Texture Compression (S3TC) (sometimes also called DXTn or DXTC) is a group of related image compression algorithms originally developed by S3 Graphics, Ltd. ...
History
This format was introduced with DirectX 7.0. In DirectX 8.0, support for volume textures was added. Though it was originally designed strictly for DirectX, a hack was later developed to use it with OpenGL as well. DirectX is a collection of APIs for easily handling tasks related to game programming on the Microsoft Windows operating system. ... OpenGl official logo OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a specification defining a cross-language cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 3D computer graphics (and 2D computer graphics as well). ...
DirectX is a collection of APIs for easily handling tasks related to game programming on the Microsoft Windows operating system. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... DirectDraw is part of Microsofts DirectX API. DirectDraw is used to render graphics in applications where top performance is important. ...