DX9 to call for 128bit color rendering!?!

[dimmreaper]

That's what I've been reading. Does this seem rediculous to anyone else? I can barely tell the difference between 16bit rendering and 32bit rendering. Most games I use 16bit textures and 32bit rendering. 128bit color is supposed to be better for cinematic effects. What do you guys think? Will you even be able to see the difference with modern displays?

Just to give a better idea about what 128-bit color is:

A pixel is made of three "sub-pixels", on Red, one Green, and one Blue.

With 32bit color there are 16.7 million possible pixel colors, and 256 possible sub-pixel shades. With 128bit color there are 4722366482.8 billion possible pixel colors, and 16.7 million sub-pixel shades.

That's just nuts!

[Daniel ~]

The only difference ANYONE will see is in the cost to the consumer IMHO

[Samuknow]

And how it will eat up video bandwith....


GF5 with 256 meg @ 1000 Mhz

[Holst]

You can easily tell the diference between 16 bit and 32 bit colour, but only because with 16 bit you can see graduations on lights and sky textures. With 32 bit they are all smoothed out.

I very much doubt that 128bit will be noticable over 32bit, certainly to to any great extent.

This sounds like an excuse to sell us more expensive memory than we need. Making high polygon games is expensive to develop. Making 128bit couour games will be less expensive and just as demanding on graphics cards.

Im running a GF3 thats over a year old and I can still run any game at 1280x1024 resolution, I have no need to buy a GF4 and I will probably be able to keep this card running (once volt modded and OC) untill the GF6 is out. Nvidia and others need an excuse to sell us another card as current games just arnt demanding enough.

[dimmreaper]

Originally posted by Holst
This sounds like an excuse to sell us more expensive memory than we need.

That is exactly what I was thinking. 128bit color textures will require 4 times the memory and 4 times the memory bandwidth. I hope game developers distribute future games with 32bit textures as well as 128bit textures, and I hope they allow for rendering in lower color depths.

[Hamzter]

I've heard about using 48bit colours (16bit for each colour). There's no way you'll notice any difference past that kinda detail. Video memory is way too expensive to use on such a useless gimmick...

[K6-III]

...but 40bit color ala Matrox Parhelia..

[Hamzter]

Oh yeh, I meant 40 bit...

[Áedán]

Originally posted by dimmreaper
With 32bit color there are 16.7 million possible pixel colors, and 256 possible sub-pixel shades. With 128bit color there are 4722366482.8 billion possible pixel colors, and 16.7 million sub-pixel shades.

Sorry Dimm, but lets get this right. 24bit colour gives you 16.7 pixel combinations. 32bit colour gives you 4294.9 million shades.

128bit colour would give you 3.4E38 colours. That's 340 undecillion colours, or 34 thousand billion billion billion billion colours. (Go on Kaitain, correct me! )

Most monitors struggle to do better than 24bit colour, and suffer a limited gamut into the bargain too. 128bit colour? Get real!

Within the limited gamut of the monitor, the eye can resolve about 16.7million colours (24bits). 32bit colour is already higher resolution than the eye can perceive (and most monitors can display) 128bit colour? No thanks.


AidanII

[Pinky]

Another exceptionally nerdy thread!!

Learned more than i wanted to, so I guess I will just have to be edumacated on this now .

Seriously, good work aligning my marbles

[Samuknow]

I think the preferred terminology is GEEKY. J/K

Some more knowledge to baffle your friends with..

[Áedán]

Sad isn't it?

I actually had to use a calculator to work out what 2^128-1 was, cuz it's just such a stupidly big number. I then had to do lots of hunting to find out what name someone gave to a number with so many zeros in it. *sigh*

Sometimes I really wonder why I bothered?

AidanII

[Samuknow]

Well I must admit I was quite impressed, with the word undecillion. I can tell ya that was a first and I'm an Engineer so I deal with math every day...

[dimmreaper]

Originally posted by AidanII
Sorry Dimm, but lets get this right. 24bit colour gives you 16.7 pixel combinations. 32bit colour gives you 4294.9 million shades.

Right you are bro. Sorry, I was going by my often unreliable memory on the 32bit deal, rather than punching it in to the old calculator. Not really sure were that 4722366482.8 billion came from, must have slipped and hit a wrong key or something . . .

[dimmreaper]

Originally posted by AidanII
Most monitors struggle to do better than 24bit colour, and suffer a limited gamut into the bargain too. 128bit colour? Get real!

Perhaps M$ plans on building hardware that taps directly in to the optic nerve in the near future If they can attatch a rat's eye balls to it's auditory nerves, then attatching a display to the optic nerve must be right around the corner

Of course these rumors I've been reading about 128bit color could be total B.S., I wasn't really buying totally in to it which is why I posted this thread after all (note the "!?!" in the title).

[reddeathdrinker]

Suits me fine......by the time I can afford a new video card, the 8500's will be nice and cheap.....

[Hamzter]

Turns out the rumour was true, toms hardware's preview of the Radeon 9700 claim that Direct X 9.0 will very much support 128bit colour depth. But the question is, why?

[Samuknow]

Well hopefully it will be a while befor we actually see games that support this. I can't afford a new card again....

[Áedán]

Originally posted by Hamzter
Turns out the rumour was true, toms hardware's preview of the Radeon 9700 claim that Direct X 9.0 will very much support 128bit colour depth. But the question is, why?

It doesn't. I should have seen this before, so I'm beginning to think I must be going stupid. On top of that, I've led everyone astray too! You're all too sheep-like!

Let me repeat, the Radeon 9700 does NOT support 128bit colour depth. However, the Radeon 9700 DOES support 128bit precision.

Why? Putting multple textures over the same polygon leads to inaccuraces in the rendering, due to lack of bits to represent the final resultant texture.

Textures can be represented as a set of floating point numbers, no problem there.

Doing operations (maths!) with floating point numbers requires a certain level of accuracy. Using 32bits of floating point, and using 128bits of floating point doesn't make any difference in how big the number can be at the end. It does make a difference in how accurate the number is, due to rounding errors in representing floating point numbers as binary numbers.

No, this isn't anything like 16bit to 32bit textures, that's a colour depth issue, not a floating point issue... This is much more subtle, and points to the fact that DirectX 9 is going to support more textures in a pass.

It's all to do with floating point maths, not with colour depth!

AidanII

P.S. I'd explain floating point numbers in binary, but it's a bit complex for the "average" person.

[mookydooky]

I think all that stuff AidanII said at the end there basically means that the polygons will look better? Due to better accuracy in the floating point numbers when the polygons are rendered? As you can tell, I've never taken an engineering class in my life. I should have since my school had an excellent engineering department. Maybe the next time around.