12bit color game limitations.
- Thread starter Aerobahn
- Start date
Rainbow Man
Veteran
I somewhat question the need for 4.3 trillion colors (when I was young(er) 16 was considered alright 
).
Also I doubt there are all that many devices capable of displaying them. Ordinary DVI and HDMI cannot. A lot of flatpanels can't even do standard 16.8 million from what I've read.
Peace.
).Also I doubt there are all that many devices capable of displaying them. Ordinary DVI and HDMI cannot. A lot of flatpanels can't even do standard 16.8 million from what I've read.
Peace.
Blending should be done in float formats, which would necessitate 32 bit or even 64 bit per channel to elliminate blending artefacts. If the rendering is handled correctly, output only needs to be in 24 bit colour to get movie quality visuals. I don't see many people complaining about 24 bit colour looking posterized!
The Wii cannot do color beyond 8-bit per component, but the 360, PS3 and most recent PC video cards use 32-bit per channel math within the pixel shaders and are capable of outputing 10-bit per channel framebuffers.
My question is: are their any consumer/retail displays that specfically claim the ability to display 10-bit output accurately?
My question is: are their any consumer/retail displays that specfically claim the ability to display 10-bit output accurately?
No, and until HDMI1.3 there wasn't any point to 10bit colour either. Now 1.3 is out, high colour displays will come, and in theory PS3 could output higher colour resolutions. I doubt we'll see any benefit at all with high colour displays.
I know this is a bit off topic..but:
Do we know what color depth Motorstorm is using? This is one game that whenever I play or have people over the flaw they always comment on is the color banding. It is very noticeable and I think somewhat distracting.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
The panels themselves probably don't necessarily need the full 10/12-bit accuracy right away either. It's more important that they get information in that format to work with and that enables the pre-processing before display (e.g. colour conversion, downsampling, dithering, filtering, etc.) to be smoother. If you process with a 12-bit source and internally at that precision at all steps prior to generating the output image, even a 6-bit per component(18-bit) panel should still show some improvement over an 8-bit source.
Of course, there are loads of other problems including the fact that the streams you get usually have a compressed dynamic range.
Though the fact that you mention whenever *you* play or have someone over to your place makes me wonder how much your display and/or settings or hookup might have to do with it.
Of course, there are loads of other problems including the fact that the streams you get usually have a compressed dynamic range.
Most likely the same 8-bits-per-component that is generally the most common throughout all modern games. The thing with Motorstorm (my guess) is that they're just really heavy on the alpha blending throughout, which depends on what already lies in the framebuffer (which is anyway lower precision than the internal computations in shaders).
Though the fact that you mention whenever *you* play or have someone over to your place makes me wonder how much your display and/or settings or hookup might have to do with it.
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There is the wonderful invention call analog displays.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
They'll be rediscovered when the failings of wholly digital display technologies start making people find more and more flaws, and then analog will be the next big wave. I'm reminded somewhat of those Socket-478 P4 motherboards with the vacuum tube audio.
Many games on 360 uses its FP10 framebuffer format, which stores R, G and B as 3e7 floats. This greatly reduces color banding, and is the reason that for example Crackdown can do exposure effects for free and shows nearly zero banding even when blending stuff in really dark areas. Of course, this is converted to 8-bit for scanout, so a higher color display would do no better.
The PS3 does unfortunately not support this very convenient format.
The PS3 does unfortunately not support this very convenient format.
