Several file formats are used for many things. For example, the PKG format is used for vehicle models, props, monuments, facades and even the hud-map. This section describes several of these common formats.

• 3D Object models (PKG)

  The geometry of small 3D objects are defined by PKG-files. These files are divided into several sections, or chunks. The structure has similarities with the standard wave/riff format.

  The PKG-files define the objects using triangle or quad facets, each facet is grouped into a facet group that is assigned a shader. The shader defines colour attributes and, if needed, a texture map name.

• Texture maps (TEX)

  Texture mapping is the most commonly used method to apply colour to an MM2 city and the objects within it. It has been shown that MM2 can use some variants of the Targa (TGA) file format. Because this format is a public one, it has been the preferred texture format for new cars and cities.

  Still, most original textures are encoded in a custom file format, known as TEX. This file format has many features, but the most significant one is the possibility to store mip-maps for the texture. Mip-maps are scaled copies of the original texture map. When surfaces are distant, a smaller scale is used and the surface looks less cluttered.