Do colors make a big difference in performance?

[Cyan]

I can't believe I'm having this conversation. Laa-Yosh, when a developer picks a 16 bit FB, does that lock them out of the majority of colours available? Does an artist end up only having a limited range of colours to pick from, only low-key browns and greys? No. They lose colour fidelity, but not colour range. So choosing 16 bit doesn't affect the choice of colours and vice versa, so wanting to save resources by going 16 bit FBs isn't going to require a limited colour palette.

Yes, someone could choose a 16 bit FB format, but they can go primary school colours with that or psychedelic or true-to-life or next-gen brown. The colour aesthetic isn't compromised at all in any way whatsoever - it'll just be dithered or posterized. As per the OP and the question being asked. Not "does lower colour fidelity have performance savings?" but "does a limited palette?"

Are you Shifty sure that those primary school colours and the 16 bit format aren't the same formats used in a lot of games featuring characters and celebrities that all the twelve year old girls are nuts about?

Or maybe all games just look alike?

Well, seriously, a 65.536 palette is a lot of colour so you can go psychedelic, like you say, but it seems to be something more going on at the framebuffer level because the same 256 colour image -like the beautiful lioness in Windows 95 theme, which was described as a 256 colours photo-....

when you set the desktop to 32 bit Colour, looked A LOT better to me.

By the way, this image brings me SERIOUS NOSTALGIA of the initial days I purchased my first PC, back in September 1995.

Pretty much like you told me once about 2D games like Age of Empires and the increased Field of Vision when you go from, for instance, 800x600 to 1024x768, or from 1024x768 to 1280x1024, which doesn't happen in 3D engines and games, perhaps it's just something that doesn't affect the image for 3D formats, but time ago when 2D consoles SNES, Neo Geo and Megadrive came out, the richer the colour palette the more powerful the console, meaning that the addition of a more varied amount of colours affected the performance.

Also the very few 3D games like Starfox for the SNES and Virtua Racing (Megadrive) looked extremely drab.

Also I don't know if it was due to the 2D format but I always loved how adventures like Broken Sword looked and always dreamt about seeing 3D games like that someday, which never happened until not much time ago, because the colours weren't as vibrant.

 

[Simon F]

Cyan,
Don't confuse a 256 colour palette system with direct encoded 16bpp - they are quite different beasts.

 

[Cyan]

Cyan,
Don't confuse a 256 colour palette system with direct encoded 16bpp - they are quite different beasts.

I am sorry for my lack of knowledge, observation and understanding about a 256 colour palette system and direct encoded formats...however, I am curious to know the difference both and I would like to understand what differentiates things between the 2 systems and which is which in technical terms. Also the differences in looks between both.

By the way, for those people who miss the old Microsoft Plus 95 (Plus 98 was the same basically but for Windows 98) themes in modern Windows versions, try this link:

http://kcomputerzone.ca/pages/downloads/plus-98.php

For the people who liked the old themes of windows 98 PLUS! and miss them when they use modern windows computers.

Available themes :

Baseball (256 color)
Dangerous Creatures (256 color)
Inside your Computer (high color)
Jungle (256 color)
Leonardo da Vinci (256 color)
More Windows (high color)
Mystery (high color)
Nature (high color)
Science (256 color)
Space (256 color)
Sports (256 color)
The 60's USA (256 color)
The Golden Era (high color)
Travel (high color)
Underwater (high color)
Windows 98 (256 color)

How to use:

Select the theme you whish to use:

Windows 2000

Click on Start menu and click Run... then type themes.exe and pick a theme from the list and click apply.

Windows XP / Server 2003

Right click on desktop and select Properties then select the Themes tab and pick a theme from the list and click apply.

Windows Vista

Right click on desktop and select Personalize then select the Theme and pick a theme from the list and click apply.

My favourite has to be Dangerous Creatures, it makes Windows look a lot more beautiful and it's easy to read documents and pages because of the choices and changes in the interface. Give it a try if you don't believe me.

The sounds are fun, really. -press Secondary mouse button and the Primary button, for instance, and you will know what I mean-. Or closing Windows....

Good memories, and works like a charm in my current laptop.

p.s. It's only 9 megs of sheer awesomeness.

 

[lilbroK]

Shifty, a 16 bit frame buffer is exactly one half of a 32 bit frame buffer, and it takes about half the bandwidth to read and write into it. Even if the GPU is already equipped to work at high color precision internally, the VRAM and its bus would still be less of a limit if you'd cut the traffic nearly in half.

But of course it's an absurd idea to go for an R5G6B5 format buffer, as it would offer nearly unacceptable image quality loss, banding, dithering and such - I've only used it as an example to illustrate that every single game already pays a significant performance penalty, and some are willing to pay even more (like Frostbite 2 with it's 5 RGBA buffers for deferred rendering).

I see because I noticed that were big coloration differences between GOW and GOW 2, ME and ME2 and as well as the common coloration difference I was see between games on different consoles lik RE4 on the GC and RE on the PS2.

One of the biggest places I noticed this was with the filters in RE5. All of them seem to use a pretty shallow color pallette of exactly the same amount of colors. None of them featured the vibrance variance of previous games on older systems. I never could figure out why that was.

Thanks for the info. This had been bugging me for a while.

 

[lilbroK]

Something is confusing me regarding this. I am constantly hearing these claims pertaining to the Nintendo Wii that it can only do cartoony colors. If the statements made in this thread are true then that is completely impossible.

If colors make no impact on performance then how could that statement be true? I believe I've seen that statement by some of the very individuals who are saying that it makes no difference in this thread. There is either a huge contradiction here somewhere or a huge bias.

Also, the questions of the difference between the same games on varying systems hasn't been addressed. I noticed that the PS3 versions of the COD games tend to have this cartoony glow to them while the 360 version tends to be solidly colored like in real life. Kind of like the difference between a Soap Opera and a Motion Picture. Then there is the difference in color between Bully on the Wii and the PS2 or even RE4 on the GC and on the PS2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZfJ_L5tpnc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hLnSGzKc4o


What are the reason for all of these things? None of this is making since to me. I keep hearing all of these statements that contradict other matters.

 

[Richard]

Something is confusing me regarding this. I am constantly hearing these claims pertaining to the Nintendo Wii that it can only do cartoony colors. If the statements made in this thread are true then that is completely impossible.

colours or graphics? I've seen the later, not the former.

If colors make no impact on performance then how could that statement be true? I believe I've seen that statement by some of the very individuals who are saying that it makes no difference in this thread. There is either a huge contradiction here somewhere or a huge bias.

It would be helpful to have the specific statements made regarding the cartoony colours.

Also, the questions of the difference between the same games on varying systems hasn't been addressed. I noticed that the PS3 versions of the COD games tend to have this cartoony glow to them while the 360 version tends to be solidly colored like in real life. Kind of like the difference between a Soap Opera and a Motion Picture. Then there is the difference in color between Bully on the Wii and the PS2 or even RE4 on the GC and on the PS2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZfJ_L5tpnc

Seems to me they are mostly differences in lighting (quantity and quality). Different lights contribute the different final pixel colours.

 

[nintenho]

I noticed that the more technically impressive a game is considered, the smaller the color palette. Exactly how does coloration effect performance? I remember how the creators of Mass Effect 2 said they had larger color palette than in the first game like this was a colossal achievement.

What exactly is the impact of colors on GPU performance and the graphics overall?

Maybe they're talking about the HDR lighting? I guess you could say that it gives you a greater range of colors and they did actually make some obvious tweaks to the lighting when porting ME2 to PS3.

 

[AlNom]

I was just thinking about Mass Effect 2's 2-channel rendering during interactive cut-scenes (consoles-only, though maybe it's still used on lower settings on PC?). The red-green artefacts are pretty strong. It also results in some wonky colouring with shadows and lighting at times.

 

[lilbroK]

Maybe they're talking about the HDR lighting? I guess you could say that it gives you a greater range of colors and they did actually make some obvious tweaks to the lighting when porting ME2 to PS3.

I'm talking about the 360 version not the PS3 version as I have not played it and know nothing about it.

colours or graphics? I've seen the later, not the former.



It would be helpful to have the specific statements made regarding the cartoony colours.



Seems to me they are mostly differences in lighting (quantity and quality). Different lights contribute the different final pixel colors.

What would be the difference between saying cartoony colors and graphics? Both are about coloration aren't they.

If it lighting is the cause then how exactly is it so? I can see there being a difference in visibility do to darkness but the colors appear way more vivid in on game than another on another console when both console have the same color rendering capability. The only thing I can see being the cause is performance but so many people are saying that it doesn't make a difference.

I need a clear and detailed explanation of how this works because none of this makes sense to me.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What would be the difference between saying cartoony colors and graphics? Both are about coloration aren't they.

Richard means cartoony colours as primary reds, greens, yellows and blues - bright and childish. And cartoony graphics as cel shaded, like a cartoon. Cartoony colours can be used in any engine, and add no particular cost. Cartoony graphics can simplify the lighting calculations, although sophisticated Anime type graphics could be just as demanding by my reckoning.

If it lighting is the cause then how exactly is it so? I can see there being a difference in visibility do to darkness but the colors appear way more vivid in on game than another on another console when both console have the same color rendering capability. The only thing I can see being the cause is performance but so many people are saying that it doesn't make a difference.

It is not performance! We've explained it cannot be. For whatever reason, the saturation is reduced on the Wii. If they changed the primary lightsource (sun) to be more yellowy, it'd be a better match. But as these consoles do not work in the HSL colour space, there's nothing to be gained by reducing saturation. The textures are no smaller. The lighting calculations are no less complex. In this specific comparison I'd initially question the capture method. Both Wii and PS2 are broadcasting SD signals. Their capture hardware may not be set up at all correctly for that, producing washed out colours that wouldn't apparent on a player's TV.

I need a clear and detailed explanation of how this works because none of this makes sense to me.

The initial discussion is telling you that the choice of number of colours does not make any savings on Wii. It is not a way to save processing resources. Mario Galaxy has lots of bright, vivid colours, for example. There's no such thing as a limited colour palette this generation, as all consoles have a 24 bit colour palette for their RGB output (although capped to TV's limited RGB range on some sets). If you see a dull coloured game on Wii, it has nothing to do with resources, any more than Resistance:FoM and Gears of War were 'next-gen brown' because of hardware limits.

 

[nintenho]

I'm talking about the 360 version not the PS3 version as I have not played it and know nothing about it.

I'm saying that since it's the only thing they really tweaked between versions, it might have been something they just paid more attention to in the game's graphics. But both console versions have HDR lighting, it just seems they made some subjective changes in the way it looked when porting to PS3 since one character (Jacob) had some weird shadowing issues on his face.

What HDR does is it essentially allows a greater contrast between light and dark areas and maybe that makes some people feel like the colors are more saturated? Here's an example from Oblivion: