Introduction

Extended Bitmaps and FS2000

While FS2000 still supports the old FS98 R8 format textures (with the notable exception of the "Night Lighting" colours in the R8 palette) it has also introduced a new set of Texture formats developed from the Extended Bitmap format first seen in Combat Flight Simulator (CFS).

Microsoft have revealed no details about these new Formats (or even said that they exist) so all the information in this document has been discovered by the time-honoured method of trial and error, theory and experiment.

The existence of a "New" format based on the standard Windows Bmp format was first discovered by Neil Park who, by a lot of careful detective work, worked out the Bitmap Transparency system used by CFS.

Investigations into the File Size discrepancies of the CFS textures led to the uncovering of the Pyramid-Encoding technique used (or "MipMapping" as Microsoft would now like us to call it) whereby each texture contains all possible sub-sizes of the main image for faster, higher quality, rendering of textures at varying distances.

This document does not attempt to cover the usage of the new formats in scenery creation. That will be covered elsewhere. It will attempt to present a description of the various formats along with as much technical data as has been deciphered to date.