rec.autos.simulators

For games that you find ugly in 16 bit mode; what reason would you give for
why it is ugly?  Dithering artifacts?  Texture Banding?  Bad coloration due
to multiple translucent polygons being blended on top of each other?  Any
other reasons?  Again, not interested in depth testing artifacts.

Thanks all for your input.

Mud

homeworld, quake3arena are 2 which immediately come to mind where i noticed,
probably cfs2 but haven't looked, jf18 definitely needed 32bit color as the
clouds are very banded.

haven't had enough time lately ;)

--
Bard
http://www.1vvfsc.org  - vancouver flight sim club
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--------------
Devo

  100% agree w/ Mr Whip It.

   Charlie

I even have a card now that does 32bit just fine but I prefer the faster
16bit setting as I still can't tell the difference.  IMHO, the folks that
say they can see a difference either have an expensive 20+ inch monitor or
they are simply saying it to win an argument.

16 bit vs 32 bit color most often has nothing to do with what your are
pointing out.  This is a dithering problem that can or can't be fixed in the
driver settings (depending on what card you own).  For example,  My Radeon
has the option to change the dithering type using "Radeon Tweaker" or I can
leave it ugly and benefit from the speed.  32 vs 16bit has nothing to do
with it although sometimes going to 32bit will fix dithering problems.  But
again, this is card specific and can even be driver specific or setting
specific AFAIK.

HM looks gorgeous in 16bit on the Radeon and I can't tell the difference
either way.  Now in Quake III the smoke has some banding or cheescloth
effect but this can be changed via options settings.  I don't play Q3 anyway
as I prefer UT though LOL.

On Fri, 22 Jun 2001 01:23:46 GMT, "Andrew Dayton"

for instance...N4 can be played in 16 bit

Not true.  32 bit color is not dithered.  No reason to dither 32 bit color
unless the internal calculations of each color component (ARGB) are more
than 8 bits each.

It's interesting to hear that most people see no difference and are happy
with 16 bit.  I agree that this is a feature that few appreciate and is more
a marketing bullet than anything else right now.  In the future, however,
DX8 and certainly DX9 and beyond cards will require 32 bit color for the
many blending passes they will use and probably higher internal precision
per color component (12 or greater).  Dithering may come into play for 32
bit color at this point.

Mud

LOL. There are noticable differences between 16 and 32bit, the main one
being colour space. 16bit is made up from 5bit Red, 6bit Green, and 5bit
Blue. If you look at a black and white gradient in 16bit then you'll notice
the extra bit in the green makes quite a difference. You'll get 64 bands and
every 2nd one will only be different because of the extra green bit, like
this:

00,00,00
00,04,00
08,08,08
08,12,08
16,16,16
16,20,16
etc...

Dithering can hide it to a certain degree (as well as the overall banding
due to lack of bandwidth) and resolution is important, if the gradient is
only taking a small part of the screen then there's not enough pixel space
for 32bit to make much, if any, difference anyway.

Games that tend to use coloured lights and complimentary colours tend to
look best in 16bit because they are using more of the bandwidth in the
available colourspace. A yellow to blue gradient gives more steps than a
yellow to black one.

Andy

Dither can be very ugly, I hate 16bit. I hate little dots.

I also hate 16bit sound.

Pasha

Star Trek: Dominion Wars suffers from horrendous 16bit dithering..

--
-=-
James Boswell

ICQ #: 1653327

I get green smoke in NFS:PU if I run it in 16-bit mode on my TNTY2 Pro.
Running in 32-bit mode gives smoke of a more believable colour.....

Ian