Wich is the best? the smallest? the one that will make less lag
*.BMP?
*.PCX?
*.DDS?
*.TGA?

Sorry for my bad english

thx b4,

what has the texture to do with lags? wanna send one over the net?

the choice of format depends on your needs. bmp/pcx have no alpha channel, so if you want to work with most GS shaders or transparency, they aren't for you.
tga has an alpha channel, but is big. dds supports alpha channel and texture compression, but must be square.

pcx = smallest in size and acceptable for normal textures without alphachanel-transparency.
bmp = quite good in quality (better than pcx) but bigger in size than pcx, no alphachanel-transparency support.
dds = smallest in size when in need of alphachanel-transparency (plants...e.g) also better than pcx for skycubes and A6-sky textures.
tga = best in quality but biggest in size, supports alphachanel-transparency.

Try to get familiar with dds...it's the most advanced technique for 3D.

Edit: Using dds for skycubes requires the sylex3-plugin (make a search...) beacause (like DaBro0zar said) the textures must be square!

There are different DDS subformats. The smallest file size with DDS has no alpha channel and good compression. Some other subformats do have alpha channels with several qualities (amount of bits per pixel).

So DDS could be the all-in one solution and you don't need bmp, tga or pcx in the future.

DDS don't has to be square. Only if you want to create mip maps automtatically then they need squared sizes. DDS is very flexible. Just play a bit with the GIMP plug-in and you will see.

agreed. I used tga before 6.4, dds right now (plugin for Photoshop) and quite happy .

k then, the winner is dds?

in general, yes (due to the fact that most video cards natively support DXTn texture compression). it's up to you - to decide which format to use in a sertain situation