Format Battle General Discussion Thread III: Discuss it here! - Page 12  

Why ?

Yes, they are capable of processing Deep Color, it's just data. More to the point, it's more data per frame, so there'd be a performance hit on games. Upsampling/upconverting 24-bit game art would also consume CPU cycles and take a bite out of frame rates. Start with higher bit color or upsample 24-bit, a performance hit still takes place. I question whether deeper color is necessary, or would even be noticed, on games. Myst, maybe, but certainly not a FPS.

I have no doubt that higher bit color will be a good thing for movies, but it is still years away.

There is a performance hit from rendering at 64-bit RGBA but it is quite possible to do and I would point out that is how the impressive lighting effects are done in some of the modern game engines such as the Unreal Engine 3.



Most of the modern game engines I have read about allow the use of 64-bit RGBA textures so there shouldn't be any need to upsample the textures.



Personally I would expect a FPS to be a great candidate for Deep Color and in fact aren't there several FPS games in development using HDR lighting? One of the simplest and best ways to do that is to render the game at 64-bit RGBA.



I agree that we won't see Deep Color used for movies anytime soon since it isn't supported by any of the current HD video formats.

You remind me a little bit of a friend of mine. He always has the newest gadgets, home theater or otherwise.

I won't digress into an HDMI 1.3 discussion, but suffice to say that I agree with pepar, that you shouldn't expect a difference in movie picture quality from a BD player (or HD-DVD player) because it has HDMI 1.3. There's a discussion of HDMI 1.3 on this thread if you're interested.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=789994

In my case, I plan to use my HD-XA2 as my primary movie player for about 2 to 3 years. The next player I expect to buy (if my theory is right ) is a universal player that covers both formats. I expect that universal players at that point will also cover BD-Video 2.0. We'll see how things work out.

>>>> You remind me a little bit of a friend of mine. He always has the newest gadgets, home theater or otherwise. <<<<

I must confess, that's me...I like "the newest gadgets," not really for display value but more for admiration...things like the upcoming iPhone (which, interestingly enough, I will NOT be purchasing simply because Cingular sucks here where I'm at and Verizon service is awesome and I won't switch just to have the iPhone) really intrigue me and I like playing with them and such...but in the end I typically stay with what works best for me, so while I'll sometimes go purchase "the newest gadget," if after I check it out I don't like it as much as the old tried-and-true, I'll dump the new'one in favor of old faithful and keep on truckin', satisfied.

>>>> I won't digress into an HDMI 1.3 discussion, but suffice to say that I agree with pepar, that you shouldn't expect a difference in movie picture quality from a BD player (or HD-DVD player) because it has HDMI 1.3. There's a discussion of HDMI 1.3 on this thread if you're interested.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=789994 <<<<

I'm definitely interested, and actually that was a very informative read...thanks for sharing!

>>>> In my case, I plan to use my HD-XA2 as my primary movie player for about 2 to 3 years. The next player I expect to buy (if my theory is right ) is a universal player that covers both formats. I expect that universal players at that point will also cover BD-Video 2.0. We'll see how things work out. <<<<

Sounds like a good plan!

~J~

Why not?

Anyone suggesting a new theory or stating a claim must provide evidence to support it: it is not sufficient to say "you can't disprove this." Specifically, when anyone is making a bold claim, it is not someone else's responsibility to disprove the claim, but is rather the responsibility of the person who is making the bold claim to prove it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Burden_of_proof

I dunno, this just seems like another 'This one goes to 11' thing. My car has a stop speed of 213 mph, but I drive to and from work in rush hour. It's nice to have a car that goes to 213 mph though.

I'm not sure which bit-depths were referenced in the article I read, so I'll try to dig it up and post a link, but I'm pretty sure it just said that the human eye can't percieve 'them'. Not to mention that there aren't any sources out there mastered in that format anyways. But, for arguments sake, I can say that all Blu-ray players support 64-bit deep color today. No one can tell if that's true or not ... so what's the point of it?

I understand where you're coming from in the sense of wanting the most possible. But why should I pay more for something intangible that I cannot appreciate?

Impressive lighting effects can no doubt be made smoother with more bits/color, and perhaps that's where Joe Gamer could notice a difference, but "quite possible" and "allow" are very different from a game actually having 36-bit art/textures. It's the difference between potential and actual.


Again, High Dynamic Range lighting is not, nor does it depend on, 36-bit color. My opinion that it wouldn't be noticed in a FPS is due to the nature of gameplay; players are focused - intently - on situational awareness, strategy, movement and shot accuracy. The textures on the wall, beyond a certain level of realism, are probably not even noticed.

That's what you would think, that FPS games run by these beautifully textured walls too fast to appreciate the details. Yet FPS games have the most advanced graphics engines.

There are other games in development where environments are being painstakingly created.

John Carmack demo'd his new engine, in which he claimed there were 20 GB of textures for just a single level (hello Blu-Ray).

Why?

As storage space on the delivery medium and video card memory and CPU/GPU horsepower have increased, the need for compression on textures has waned. I do not know whether game art is and has been created in 36-bit color, but if so, part of the "compression" has been dithering it down. Still, keeping frame rates up is king and the move to 36-bit color on games, if it occurs, will be gradual - Carmack may very well be the pioneer as his engines always stress existing hardware - and only happen when the first three factors I mentioned advance enough so that frame rates do not plunge.

Just my $.02.

Let me start by saying that you are free to read all of my prior posts to verify my earlier position and I do actually own more than one HD-DVD player.

Now, based on the latest numbers contained in the recent Toshiba Press Release, I am slowly coming to the opinion that HD-DVD may actually be on the ropes. I felt that Toshiba and the HD group were doing everything right and that ultimately they would prevail as the pricing reached mass market levels. However, I felt that as of now, HD-DVD would need something like 75-80% of the stand alone market and that the numbers would need to be in the 250-300,000 range for their strategy to work. Prior to this latest statement, I was sure these numbers in my head were occurring.
I felt all along that if BD were able to hang in there until their prices could slowly drop that HD-DVD was in trouble due to studio support. I was concerned that PS3 was going to be able to assure this just by itself. Now, however, it seems that the BD stand alones are doing much better than I would have anticipated (as a percentage) and once you add in the PS3s that are (even if occaisionally) used as BD players.
The problem I see is that nothing is occurring that would cause a studio to switch allegiance to HD, which is what I expected would finally bring an HD victory to the "war".
Chalk me up as a nervous HD owner (even though I have 1 BD player, I own no BD discs- only HD discs).

I don't think you need to worry too much. TSB has essentially sold 50K standalones in 6 weeks. (They announced the 100K in mid April, and the 150K at the beginning of June). That's better than the PS3 has sold in Japan in the same timeframe, and probably about half of what the PS3 sold in the US in that time. When there are enough players available that the studios can recoup costs and start making profits on the average title, the ones who are not making those profits will start to think about why they're not making them. That appears to be the moral of recent Warner announcements. I'd bet that Planet Earth and Departed are both profitable now, and they got there because a lot of the costs of producing the titles are shared between both formats (Mastering, Encoding, special feature production and encoding, etc). Why sell to 150K people when you can sell to 300K for only incrementally more?

I'm sure TSB is very happy to revise down their estimates by 44% after experiencing great sales following a series of price drops and promotions.

Considering that Toshiba sold 50k units in the last two months alone and that BD standalones have only managed to sell 100k units after one year, I don't think BD supporters should get too excited.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...rice-cuts.html

A lot of people also said that same exact thing about 1080p. What I have read about Deep Color seems pretty common sense to me since video professionals have long said that improvements in image quality could be made by going beyond 24-bit RGB. And it has also been known for a long time that the RGB color space wasn't capable of displaying all of the colors properly. In other words I think that Deep Color and xvYCC will be noticeable improvements in video quality.



I looked around for that and eventually came up with this article from ExtremeTech:

Well first off I would mention again that the three color depths for Deep Color are 30-bit, 36-bit, and 48-bit so I could tell you here and now that it couldn't be 64-bit and of course none of the current HD formats support Deep Color video encodings. Also most of the Deep Color displays that have been announced haven't been released yet but there are actually a few Deep Color displays that you can buy today.



Just curious but why are you so certain that you won't be able to see any improvement? Personally speaking I think we will be able to notice the improvements made by Deep Color for actual Deep Color sources. Granted that will basically be limited to the PS3 at first but as time goes on I expect more sources of actual Deep Color video to appear. For instance I will predict here and now that the next Xbox game console will support Deep Color output for its games. Deep Color makes a great deal of sense for game consoles considering that GPUs are capable of rendering at very high bit depths. And the improvement of high bit depth rendering is even noticeable on non-Deep Color displays. That is why recent CGI movies are rendered at 128-bit RGBA.

Of course to get the full benefit of Deep Color output for a video game it would be best to have the textures at a high bit depth and not just the lighting effects.



I would point out though that one of the improvements made by Deep Color is being able to see properly in low light conditions. I think even in a very fast paced FPS, which not all of them are, that would be a welcome improvement.

Agreed, but how would 36-bit color improve visibility in low light conditions? I assume you mean in dark environments in the game and not in the room with one's computer and monitor? In that case, wouldn't a better monitor - better black levels and better contrast - do more to improve a game's low level detail?

Jeez, another more is better discussion. Any sources for studies that show we are suffering from 24 bit color? Or are we back in the realm of silver plated cables? Can't decide if a good analogy, in terms of zealotry, is left wing socialists or right wing capitalists. Real world, people. Evidence. Proof.

I might agree an infinite bit depth is perfect for image manipulation, but where does it show we need more for presentation?

If we don't need more for "presentation," why would we want to pay for the computer horsepower needed for "manipulation" of (good grief) infinite bit depth?

I still think it'll be tough to tell ... I personally cant' tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p ... sooo ... maybe it's just my gear.


Thanks the one! Thanks!


Understood ... my 64-bit comment was just an exageration to show that if anything beyond 30-bit cannot be picked up by the human eye, they might as well claim it can do 64-bit or 128-bit ... it's not like anyone would be able to tell the difference.


I dunno, perhaps my gear just isn't that good. Since you likened it to 1080i vs 1080p (which I've heard it compared to as well), I figured that since I really can't tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p, I likely wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 24-bit color and 30-bit color. Again though, I don't have stellar stuff ... slightly better than Best-Buy caliber at best.

Geez, another more is not better complaint.

Damn, can't we just go back to NTSC?

A decent photon multiplier has a gain of 10^6, or 60 dB. To me that's infinite in terms of what we're doing here.

It's not a matter of more not being better, it's a matter of diminishing returns and that 'more' not being of sufficient value to justify the added cost ... imo, of course.

Another strawman argument

My bad as I wasn't even considering photon multipliers. What could I have been thinking?

Oh heck. Why would you settle for a compromised silver plated cable when you could have solid core, hyper-pure, molecularly optimized black pearl silver?

http://www.kimber.com/select/pages/ksIntSE1030.aspx

The Fifth Element Exchange Program




Blu-ray customer representatives wait on blu-ray customers to return bogus "Fifth Element" discs...Fortunately, not many materialized...

I want one of those hats!