Console Colour pallettes?

[sergio_r]

Hi
Ive seen the term colour pallette being banded around for a few years. Common sense suggests that this means the colours avaliable to a console.
Dont all current gen consoles offer the possibility of storing colour info at 24 bit precision?
Dont they therefore all have the same colour pallett?
But different consoles so seem to effectivly have different 'colour pallettes' in practise.
The DC being bright, and the ps2 seemingly more earthy
Why is this?
What really causes it?
Texture filters?

 

[randycat99]

Art direction and target audience?

 

[Simon F]

Hi

The DC being bright, and the ps2 seemingly more earthy
Why is this?
What really causes it?
Texture filters?

The DC games typically use a mixture of 16bpp textures (i.e. full colour) or VQ compressed textures which are quite good at representing the original images.

I don't know what gets used on the ps2 but I suspect that it is heavily influenced by the fact that (a) it has only a relatively small amount of RAM available for textures and (b) its only form of texture compression is palettised (IIRC 8bit or 4bpp). It's possible that many developers are using the 4bpp mode to save texture space/transfer time and that's likely to compromise the choices of colour.

 

[Ozymandis]

One reason why many Dreamcast games were so bright was because they only used single-texturing with vertex lighting, no lightmapping.

The DC games typically use a mixture of 16bpp textures (i.e. full colour) or VQ compressed textures which are quite good at representing the original images.

I don't know what gets used on the ps2 but I suspect that it is heavily influenced by the fact that (a) it has only a relatively small amount of RAM available for textures and (b) its only form of texture compression is palettised (IIRC 8bit or 4bpp). It's possible that many developers are using the 4bpp mode to save texture space/transfer time and that's likely to compromise the choices of colour.

Simon, was the Dreamcast able to do 32bpp textures or not? I'm just curious. I know that Neon250 for PC could not use them, whether because of a driver limitation or lack of hardware support I never heard.

 

[Guest]

The DC being bright, and the ps2 seemingly more earthy

I agree and i have said that countless times.
Most PS2 games look blurry, dark and dull.

 

[sergio_r]

The DC being bright, and the ps2 seemingly more earthy

I agree and i have said that countless times.
Most PS2 games look blurry, dark and dull.

off the top of my head I cant think of one vinrant ps2 game, and by vibrant I mean bright anc colourful, with an almost saturated look, like DC.

Not that Im knocking the ps2

 

[randycat99]

Try some of the kiddie games.

I maintain that the saturated look has its place, and I don't want every game I play to be a colorized Sonic the Hedgehog kinda world.

 

[zurich]

Kingdom Hearts, naturally.

 

[Tagrineth]

TimeSplitters 2.

 

[Simon F]

Simon, was the Dreamcast able to do 32bpp textures or not? I'm just curious. I know that Neon250 for PC could not use them, whether because of a driver limitation or lack of hardware support I never heard.

I can't remember the specs for '250, but DC did not have direct support for 24/32 bit textures (framebuffer, yes, textures, no.). You could use 24/32bit colour in a palette but because the internals were geared toward 16bits/texel there was a 50% performance penalty for that mode.
Personally I don't think 24bit for colour textures is terribly important.

You could however use 16bit YUV textures which would look pretty close to 24bit.

One reason why many Dreamcast games were so bright was because they only used single-texturing with vertex lighting, no lightmapping.

Quake?

 

[Fafalada]

off the top of my head I cant think of one vinrant ps2 game, and by vibrant I mean bright anc colourful, with an almost saturated look

One that screams out immediately would be "Crash PS2".
And you can strike that "almost". The game hurt my eyes, literally, when I first saw it. Of course, I personally think that game's artwork is scarier then all SilentHill games put together, but supposingly it appeals to kids.

 

[JacksBleedingEyes]

hey whats the deal with chap and constantly knocking the PS2
I have seen him in at least half a dozen threads constantly knocking the PS2, with no arguments behind him either
Sure the PS2 has dull textures. Try playing MGS2 or ICO with bright kiddie colors

 

[Guest]

Sure the PS2 has dull textures

I am glad that you agree with me.

Try playing MGS2 or ICO with bright kiddie colors

Bad bad examples.

 

[sergio_r]

hey whats the deal with chap and constantly knocking the PS2
I have seen him in at least half a dozen threads constantly knocking the PS2, with no arguments behind him either
Sure the PS2 has dull textures. Try playing MGS2 or ICO with bright kiddie colors

So ICO has kiddy colours?(!)


Try playing Sonic Adventure with an RGB scart cable, it will make you eyes bleed

 

[Ozymandis]

Nested quotes here

Simon, was the Dreamcast able to do 32bpp textures or not? I'm just curious. I know that Neon250 for PC could not use them, whether because of a driver limitation or lack of hardware support I never heard.

I can't remember the specs for '250, but DC did not have direct support for 24/32 bit textures (framebuffer, yes, textures, no.). You could use 24/32bit colour in a palette but because the internals were geared toward 16bits/texel there was a 50% performance penalty for that mode.
Personally I don't think 24bit for colour textures is terribly important.

You could however use 16bit YUV textures which would look pretty close to 24bit.

One reason why many Dreamcast games were so bright was because they only used single-texturing with vertex lighting, no lightmapping.

Quake?

Thanks for clearing that up Simon; I had always wondered about it. I still have my Neon250


And I didn't mean that NO Dreamcast games used lightmapping. Quake, as you mentioned, Phantasy Star Online, maybe Soldier of Fortune... there are definitely a few games that used it. The majority (at least of the 35 or 40 that I own) did not.

 

[Tagrineth]

Try playing MGS2 or ICO with bright kiddie colors

So ICO has kiddy colours?(!)


Try playing Sonic Adventure with an RGB scart cable, it will make you eyes bleed

No, ICO doesn't, that's his point

And Sonic Adventure with RGB SCART? From my experience SCART is about 3/4 of the way from S-Video to Component in quality... and SA looks perfectly fine even on Composite on my TV.

 

[archie4oz]

And Sonic Adventure with RGB SCART? From my experience SCART is about 3/4 of the way from S-Video to Component in quality...

Fie upon yuo! RGB SCART preserves far more color fidelity and gamma than the YUV/YUY/YIQ intermediates that the other connecters insert... Of course a lot can depend on how your TV deals with RGB signals as well... Also are you sure your SCART connection was passing RGB?

and SA looks perfectly fine even on Composite on my TV.

Of course it does, you're tossing out a bunch of fidelity with a composite connector.

 

[Tagrineth]

And Sonic Adventure with RGB SCART? From my experience SCART is about 3/4 of the way from S-Video to Component in quality...

Fie upon yuo! RGB SCART preserves far more color fidelity and gamma than the YUV/YUY/YIQ intermediates that the other connecters insert... Of course a lot can depend on how your TV deals with RGB signals as well... Also are you sure your SCART connection was passing RGB?

and SA looks perfectly fine even on Composite on my TV.

Of course it does, you're tossing out a bunch of fidelity with a composite connector.

I honestly don't have a lot of experience with SCART, I've only used it on a DVD player and a Super NES... ~30" screen back in England.

But on my own TV, component from my DVD looks sharper than on that TV with SCART. That could just be the display settings though.

And I usually use S-Video on my DreamCast, it is sharper and noticeably more vibrant but it isn't eye-bleed worthy.

 

[archie4oz]

But on my own TV, component from my DVD looks sharper than on that TV with SCART. That could just be the display settings though.

Well it should to some degree. The reason your DVD looks so good is because it's encoded in a YCbCr (or YPbPr if you prefer) format and of course it is optimized for display on a TV (aside from any scan conversion and filtering all the TV has to do is YUVtoRGB conversion). As for sharpness, I don't know if RGB SCART allows for progressive scanning but I doubt it (it's already a high-bandwidth transmission), however your DVD can also pass a progressive scan signal across component which obviously helps.

Consoles in essence are RGB devices however, and in the case of the Dreamcast in particular, both TV and VGA devices were supported. In some cases little care was taken with regards to making sure art assets looked *clean and proper* on a TV (probably used just a VGA reference) so when displayed on a TV (especially with a composite connector) you'd get some nasty colour bleeding (reds can be rather nasty on NTSC)...

 

[Tagrineth]

My DVD player is an El Cheapo and doesn't support progressive.

Yeah, reds can get pretty screwed on old NTSC CRT's...

But on my TV, my GCN in progressive with Component-out looks fantastic playing Sonic Adventure 2, so I even have a Sonic Adventure with Component comparison. ;P

Although with composite cables on an older TV at a friend's house, the characters seem to 'shine'...