It's exactly the same thing with "retina displays" that only "need" 300 PPI (a rule Apple themselves often break, and yet still call them like that). The human eye can discern up to 600 PPI, and even up to 1200 PPI.
24-bit color sucks
41–50 of 90 posts
Re: 24-bit color sucks
#42The number of bytes of memory available on GPUs is hardly the biggest issue when considering rendering at more than 8 bits per channel of color precision. Even producing a 30-bit framebuffer (as has been supported for a while on many desktop GPUs) comes at a performance penalty and is incompatible with many pieces of software and hardware. Modern GPUs actually allow 16 bits per channel of precision when rendering, but it comes at a significant cost - various features no longer function, memory bandwidth is devoured, etc. You can't simply say 'we can spare the bits' and wave away all the technological challenges here, especially when the advantage gained from all those costs is comparatively miniscule.
To be fair, this sort of applies to retina displays as well: The hardware put into some of the Retina macs can barely handle the bandwidth demands of realtime rendering at such high resolutions. Until that problem is addressed, you certainly shouldn't be running around demanding >8bpc color precision.
Dithering for gradients could certainly make a minor difference in rendered quality, but I don't think most browser vendors are interested in making rendering performance slower right now - they're quite busy trying to make it faster. As evidenced by the fact that the OP's site runs like complete garbage in even modern browsers. Even if you spend the cycles and the power to dither, you're basically approximating something like another bit of precision. Is it really worth the cost just for another bit? You could support the argument for dithering by showing a side by side comparison, at least.
Re: 24-bit color sucks
#43What on earth is with all the motion on the website. Just because you can do animation doesn't mean you should.
It made the point about being able to distinguish fine colour gradients virtually impossible to verify - the background kept changing.
Also, it slowed site scrolling to a crawl on this reasonably beefy desktop machine.
Re: 24-bit color sucks
#44An important item is missing in this discussion. Several monitors turn your 8-bpp image to a 6-bpp image.
Several = basically all non-IPS panels I believe.
But a lot of them apply temporal dithering to kinda make up the lost 2 bits.
Re: 24-bit color sucks
#45I can't see the gradient step on my 13" MBA as hard as I try. Those extra bits would definitely be wasted on me.
Re: 24-bit color sucks
#46Green is always the worst offender https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1437645/banding.png
I don't see anything wrong with your image. The gradient looks perfect on my monitor.
Edit: it looks perfect because my sw/hw config (driver Xorg fbdev 0.4.2, AMD Fusion E-350, Lenovo X120e laptop) does automatic dithering. I can see a tiny bit of dithering on the white end of the other gradient posted by nhw: http://file.st/KWb7XS7x Other that that, no banding on either images. Dithering invisible on yours. Dithering 24-bit colors really helps.
Re: 24-bit color sucks
#47I'm missing the part about what awesome thing would be possible to do with higher-bit displays. The answer for higher-DPI displays is obvious: everything looks sharper, all the time. While it may be true that 30-bit color would allow the gradient between those two grays to be gradual instead of a single step, when does someone actually want to draw a gradient between such similar shades of gray?
Re: 24-bit color sucks
#48"With high-DPI displays, the aliasing problem caused by insufficient pixels has been extinguished." that's not true. Aliasing is an omnipresent problem in discretized data every rasterized display is based on. Even though a retina display samples at a much higher rate, it needs anti aliasing for optimal results.
I'd like 64bit displays too. The problem is that there's quasi no content and also no content pipeline. Someone has to take the first step here.
Re: 24-bit color sucks
#49The number of bytes of memory available on GPUs is hardly the biggest issue when considering rendering at more than 8 bits per channel of color precision. Even producing a 30-bit framebuffer (as has been supported for a while on many desktop GPUs) comes at a performance penalty and is incompatible with many pieces of software and hardware. Modern GPUs actually allow 16 bits per channel of precision when rendering, bu…
Actually dithering makes a huge difference. I see zero banding whatsoever in the examples posted in this thread, because my sw/hw config does automatic dithering (Xorg fbdev 0.4.2, AMD Fusion E-350 GPU, Lenovo X120e laptop).
Contrast this with other posters who I presume don't have dithering, and write comments like "this gradient looks ugly"...
Re: 24-bit color sucks
#50I agree. Displays in general suck. The display on the RMBP is a step in the right direction, but there's still a lot of work to be done. Anyone who settles for "good enough" may as well live life like it's the 16th century. It was "good enough" then too. My vision for the future? Specifications that fully exceed the human capacity for discernibility. 2880x1800? Nope, I can still see aliasing (particularly in Terminal…
While we're at it, let's also add 3D to displays.