Taken from PlanetCrap
http://www.planetcrap.com/stories/135/
"S3TC for the Direct3D API for Unreal Tournament is a petition asking Epic to incorporate hi-res texture support into UT's Direct3D rendering. The petition currently boasts around 400 signatures, although some of them are clearly fake.
"The D3D users of Unreal Tournament have seen the light," explains Michael Fouquet, who created the petition. "For too long have we had to suffer with slow frame rates and poor image quality. This petition is here to stop it." He concludes: "Nvidia has even offered to help with this issue. Therefore, we would like to see the benefits of having S3TC (improved visual quality, higher frame rates) implemented into Direct3D."
The issue has been discussed on a few Unreal web sites, such as PlanetUnreal and Savage Daily News. As well as people requesting the S3TC support, one complaint being made against Epic is that there has been no response to people's requests. Indeed, this is part of the reason why Michael Fouquet created the petition.
However, when I asked Tim Sweeney why Epic had been staying silent, he said: "If by 'staying silent' you mean we haven't answered every question on every message board on the Internet, guilty as charged! Though, I've answered about 20 'why don't you support DXT1 under Direct3D in Unreal Tournament' queries in email."
When I asked Michael to explain more about why he feels the petition is necessary, he explained: "Performance for Direct3D users is not always that great. S3TC increases the frame rate by a great number. Also it makes textures go from 256x256 in resolution to 2048x2048 in resolution. I feel it's necessary because the Direct3D users deserve the same frame rates and image quality that S3 and Glide users enjoy (even though Glide has no S3TC support on older cards it still looks better than Direct3D). About time to make sure Epic hears us out."
Well, Epic has heard them out, but not in a way that will make everyone happy. Here's the rest of what Tim had to say on the subject:
Supporting DXT1 in Direct3D would very significantly slow down our texture management code, which isn't overly fast as it is. Though the DXT1 format is only 4 bits per pixel compared to 16-32 bits per pixel for our other textures on Direct3D, the DXT1 textures we shipped with are really high-res (many 1024x1024) so they consume a lot more video memory and texture bandwidth, as well as causing contention issues with other texture sizes and formats.
Some people then ask, "so why don't you support it as an option, and let us decide whether we want the really high res textures but a significant performance drain?" My view here has been closely influenced by the experience we had with Unreal 1's "Curved Surfaces" feature, an optional feature users could turn on which caused creature and player meshes (not world geometry) to be dynamically tesselated to up to 9X higher polygon counts, making them look more smooth and curvy -- also at a slowdown. Well, tons of users turned that option on thinking it would be cool, then later experienced the slowdowns and didn't realize the slowdown was caused by that one little "curved surfaces" menu option they had selected hours or days earlier. Moral of the story: don't add optional little features that cause major slowdowns.
So, we are definitely NOT going to add DXT1 support to the Direct3D code. We are influenced a lot by users' opinions; remember the recent Unreal 1 petition which shamed us into releasing the final Unreal 1 patch? But that was something that made Unreal 1 better; adding DXT1 to UT would make the game worse and we're not going to do it no matter how many people sign the petition."
http://www.planetcrap.com/stories/135/
"S3TC for the Direct3D API for Unreal Tournament is a petition asking Epic to incorporate hi-res texture support into UT's Direct3D rendering. The petition currently boasts around 400 signatures, although some of them are clearly fake.
"The D3D users of Unreal Tournament have seen the light," explains Michael Fouquet, who created the petition. "For too long have we had to suffer with slow frame rates and poor image quality. This petition is here to stop it." He concludes: "Nvidia has even offered to help with this issue. Therefore, we would like to see the benefits of having S3TC (improved visual quality, higher frame rates) implemented into Direct3D."
The issue has been discussed on a few Unreal web sites, such as PlanetUnreal and Savage Daily News. As well as people requesting the S3TC support, one complaint being made against Epic is that there has been no response to people's requests. Indeed, this is part of the reason why Michael Fouquet created the petition.
However, when I asked Tim Sweeney why Epic had been staying silent, he said: "If by 'staying silent' you mean we haven't answered every question on every message board on the Internet, guilty as charged! Though, I've answered about 20 'why don't you support DXT1 under Direct3D in Unreal Tournament' queries in email."
When I asked Michael to explain more about why he feels the petition is necessary, he explained: "Performance for Direct3D users is not always that great. S3TC increases the frame rate by a great number. Also it makes textures go from 256x256 in resolution to 2048x2048 in resolution. I feel it's necessary because the Direct3D users deserve the same frame rates and image quality that S3 and Glide users enjoy (even though Glide has no S3TC support on older cards it still looks better than Direct3D). About time to make sure Epic hears us out."
Well, Epic has heard them out, but not in a way that will make everyone happy. Here's the rest of what Tim had to say on the subject:
Supporting DXT1 in Direct3D would very significantly slow down our texture management code, which isn't overly fast as it is. Though the DXT1 format is only 4 bits per pixel compared to 16-32 bits per pixel for our other textures on Direct3D, the DXT1 textures we shipped with are really high-res (many 1024x1024) so they consume a lot more video memory and texture bandwidth, as well as causing contention issues with other texture sizes and formats.
Some people then ask, "so why don't you support it as an option, and let us decide whether we want the really high res textures but a significant performance drain?" My view here has been closely influenced by the experience we had with Unreal 1's "Curved Surfaces" feature, an optional feature users could turn on which caused creature and player meshes (not world geometry) to be dynamically tesselated to up to 9X higher polygon counts, making them look more smooth and curvy -- also at a slowdown. Well, tons of users turned that option on thinking it would be cool, then later experienced the slowdowns and didn't realize the slowdown was caused by that one little "curved surfaces" menu option they had selected hours or days earlier. Moral of the story: don't add optional little features that cause major slowdowns.
So, we are definitely NOT going to add DXT1 support to the Direct3D code. We are influenced a lot by users' opinions; remember the recent Unreal 1 petition which shamed us into releasing the final Unreal 1 patch? But that was something that made Unreal 1 better; adding DXT1 to UT would make the game worse and we're not going to do it no matter how many people sign the petition."