Documentation for the various file types used by the Takedown-era Burnout games.

Containers

Name	Notes
Environment Track Data	Stores per-track settings for weather and lighting values as well as skybox textures.
Frontend .BIN archives	Contains frontend assets for the Apt graphics library used by Burnout Revenge and Dominator.
Game Data	Stores per-track configuration data.
Progression Data	Contains parameters and configuration data for World Tour events.
Sound Bank	Format used exclusively by Burnout's PlayStation Portable releases; stores audio files and their corresponding playback parameters.
Static Track Data	Stores the collision geometry, textures, materials, prop objects and animation data of a given track.
Streamed Track Data	Stores the main model and collision geometry of a given track.
Texture Dictionary	Stores texture assets.
Track List	Stores track information.
Value Database	Stores raw values that are used as configuration data by various elements of the game.
Vehicle Data	Stores geometry, textures, deformation parameters, and sound playback parameters for an individual vehicle.
Vehicle List	Stores vehicle information.
Wave Dictionary	Stores audio assets in a linked list.

Raw assets

Geometry

PS2 and PSP

The 3D mesh format used by Burnout's PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable versions stores both the actual mesh data as well as the GPU commands required to render the model; these commands use arguments related to the specific vertices being drawn, so they have to be grouped in as data with the rest of the file. PS2 models from the Takedown era-games seem to store their vertex data as rows of 4-byte floating-point numbers, with 3 floats in each row - it's possible each of the floats represent the X, Y and Z coordinates of the vertex.

Each "block" of mesh data on the PS2 version begins with the hex sequence 00 00 00 05 03 01 00 01 00 80.

Textures

Burnout's PS2 and PSP versions use textures stored as uncompressed bitmaps. These bitmaps contain CLUT4 (16-color) and CLUT8 (256-color) color palettes, with the palette itself being a little ways underneath the texture data. See the GtTexture section of the Common Data Types page for more information.

Xbox versions use DirectDraw Surface-formatted textures. These use either DXT compression, or uncompressed Morton order swizzled textures.

Note that the .tif extension files seen in the frontend archives of Burnout Revenge are not actually TIFF-formatted images; this just happens to be a leftover from prior to the images' conversion to CLUT/DDS textures.

Sound Data

PS2 and PSP

Sound data on Burnout's PS2 and PSP versions is encoded in Sony's proprietary PS-ADPCM format. Songs and FMV audio tracks are stored as separate files on the PSP versions and are encoded in ATRAC3+ format, another Sony codec.

Xbox/Xbox 360

Both the Original Xbox versions and Burnout Revenge's Xbox 360 remaster use Microsoft's Windows Media Audio codec for sound data. Revenge 360's WMA files are stored as-is, while the OG Xbox versions use WMA stored in the XWB container format.