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Bargain Bin Review Color Depth Continued (back to page 1) [page may take some time to load] So how does all of this work in the real world? Why would anyone want to use 16 bit color when their video card supports 32 bit color? One reason: speed. It takes substantially more power for a video card to render 32 bit images as the added weight taxes the bandwidth available to the card's memory. Many older cards are substantially faster when running in 16 bit mode, though on newer cards, the speed gap in FPS between the two modes is shrinking due to faster memory and advanced features that create more available bandwidth. However, not all games treat color in the same way. Games using the Unreal and Unreal Tournament engines (Adventure Pinball, Deep Space Nine: The Fallen, The Wheel of Time, and Xcom: Enforcer) are particularly susceptible to the ravages of 16 bit color. Undying,
an Unreal Tournament powered game, demonstrates this:
Click for 640x480 16 bit original Click for 640x480 32 bit original
16 bit
32 bit While neither sample is particularly clear at 640x480, the dithering on the 16 bit image is severe, often obscuring important details of the image, particularly in dark or shadowed regions. This is endemic to all games based on the Unreal engines making 32 bit color the only satisfactory option, even when speed takes a substantial hit. The Quake III engine, on the other hand, dithers the image differently, as do all of the games based on it, such as Heavy Metal: FAKK2 and Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force.
Click for 640x480 16 bit original Click for 640x480 32 bit original
16 bit
32 bit While the dithering is especially prevalent in the sky (as the sky is only a small texture map that is scaled to an enormous size) it does not interfere in the details of most objects. Because of this, increasing the resolution from 640x480 to 1024x768 pixels allows for smaller pixels and smaller dither patterns that become even less obtrusive. For example: many consumer model ink-jet printers are capable of printing images with thousands of dots per inch (DPI). However, many professional dye-sublimation printers achieve much better results with a horizontal DPI of only 100. This is because they can print each of the colors in the image naturally rather than having to mix three or even six different colors (from various ink cartridges) to give the appearance of a certain color, as even the best ink-jets do. Games with darker color palates are also less likely to show visible dithering than games with lighter palates, though particle and corona effects such as smoke and lens flares are often where dither patterns are most visible to casual observers. Hence, the difference between 16 and 32 bit color
in a Quake III engine game becomes less pronounced as the
resolution is increased:
16 bit color at 1024x768
32 bit color at 1024x768 However, doing the same with an Unreal powered game does not reproduce the same results. Knowing this, gamers are more able to select a color depth that is appropriate for their system--taking into account how a certain game dithers images while weighing speed against visual quality. by Richard Leader
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