Originally posted by brinck:
[b] [quote]Originally posted by michagl:
the truth is we can’t even get close to seeing 8 bits, so don’t kid yourself.
This is not true, the human eye is much more sensitive than that. That you can’t see any banding in a gradient projected on a particular CRT monitor says more about the monitor than your eye.
If I create a gradient of pure 8-bit green on my high quality monitor I can easily distinguish every single field of it.
Read more about the dynamic range of the eye here:
http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html
/A.B.[/b][/QUOTE]i will look into it because i’m interested.
but i tried eyeing some gradients. on the lcd screen of an old 300mhz portable, the distinction was very present. i presume it is using 6bits or less for its output. another reason i don’t intend to get an lcd screen anytime soon for a workstation.
on three different crt monitors which range from very bright to very dark. a grey scale i can discern within the maximum range of about 3 shades. there is an oscilating banding effect which i imagine might be the cause of this thread.
for green however on crt, i could go like 20 shades without being able to make any discernments. especially in the very green and very light regions. the middle was easier to pick out, but still impossible for up to 10 different shades. same held for all of my crts. this could to some degree very well be an effect of the crt. i’ve noticed when using a regularly spaced rainbow spectrum for debuging purposes and what not that some of the colours are much more discernable between the next.
still, i’m overwhelmed by the smoothness of a crt monitor. this might have a lot to do with the light of individual pixels bleeding over into one another.
it looks awesome to me though. and i’m an artist, so i apreciate colours.
the function of the eye though is all chemical… so naturally there are blind spots in its spectrum. maybe in the future people will have cybornetic eyes and whine about monitors with only 256bit resolution… assuming the feed isn’t pumped directly into the eye.
thanks for the link though, i will give it an eye balling.
as for max, i have a feeling the banding you are seeing has nothing at all to do with opengl, and is just your monitor’s doing. for anytime soon 24bit colour ought to suit you fine… that is 8bits per RGB channel, also sometimes called 32bit colour for your alpha channel.
the 128bit pixel buffers are really just for doing crazy shader programming stuff, and are brand new as far as i know.