DDS can be the same quality as tga <_<
Just dont compress them ...
Also dds can have mipmaps which is one of the best features ever.

THIS IS A LIE!
really, dds has not an good quality as TGA, testet it some Month ago.

regards Sebastian

Without compression dds has no quality-loss.

Thanks!

Why should someone use DDS without compression?!?


Btw, I think we are talking past each other.
We are talking about texture quality but I think the problem of 3dworld has nothing to do with texture quality. The problem is the interpolation of pixels.

But first, a few words about the texture quality of the different file formats:
1.) Bitmaps (*.bmp): They have maximum texture quality, because they are not compressed. In A6 there was the problem that 24-bit Bitmaps were rendered only with 16 bit. Therefore it was better to use 24-bit TGA pictures instead of 24-bit Bitmaps to render all 24 bit colors. But this has been a long time ago in A6 times. Now with A8 24-bit Bitmaps are also rendered with 24 bit.

2.) Targa (*.tga): Uncompressed TGA pictures also have maximum texture quality. 24-bit TGA pictures are rendered the same way as 24-bit Bitmaps. 32-bit TGA can also use transparency.

3.) DirectDraw Surface(DDS) (*.dds): This file format from Microsoft is a standard for storing textures compressed with the lossy S3 Texture Compression (S3TC) algorithm. It is optimized for graphic cards and can be decompressed in hardware by GPUs.
DDS textures have a smaller file size and are loaded and rendered faster than the other file formats. But the texture quality is not as good as the other file formats mentioned above.


But now back to the problem of blurry textures:
I think the problem of 3dworld has nothing to do with the quality of the texture. The problem is the interpolation of pixels when they are upscaled (e.g. when the virtual camera moves close to the texture).



I think this interpolation is automatically done by DirectX?!
Maybe there is a shader that can prevent this?!? But I don't think so (but I'm not a shader specialist).

I think the only way to solve this 'problem' is to use bigger texture sizes.
Using a texture size of 1024x1024 Pixels is not enough for today. It was big enough some years ago, when the maximum Desktop resolution (and also screen resolution of the game) was 1024 x 768 Pixels.
But nowadays we use screen resolutions of 1280x1024, 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and more. So a texture size of 1024x1024 should only be used for very small objects or objects that are always rendered far away in the background.

Yep it is done by DirectX. The keyword is texture sampler. The texture sampler defines how a texture gets sampled on the GPU. There are different modes of interpolation for each sampling. Common modes are Point (Single pixels, no interpolation), Linear (Linear interpolation between pixels) and Anisoptric (directional depending interpolation).


Not directly, but a correct sampler used in the shader. Gamestudio allows you to swap between linear and point interpolation without shader usage:
http://www.conitec.net/beta/aentity-nofilter.htm

So basically, 1024^2 it's not good enough for today days.

It depends on what you are wanted to create! For Example an Metal Barrell could use an 1024² Texture... Small Objects like Books / whatever could use an 512² Texture. also 256² Textures could be applied for very tiny objects like switches.
So it all Depends on the Size of an Object!

regards Sebastian

How about the textures for level blocks?

This depends on the meassurement.
1024² is enough for an Wall Object.
Dont see any reason for using an higher Texture to have "more" Details.