Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Multi-Primary Color Display Emerges as Next-Gen Color Reproduction Technology

en.ubiresearchnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 57 posts

Re: Multi-Primary Color Display Emerges as Next-Gen Color Reproduction Technology

#21

Post by layer8 »

summa_tech wrote: post #20
layer8 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are probably familiar with the horseshoe-shaped chromaticity diagram [0] of human-visible colors. A light source with three color primaries spans a triangle in that coordinate system. To cover the whole horseshoe, at least one of the vertices would need to be way outside the horseshoe. With four color primaries, you get a quadrilateral that makes it easier to cover a larger portion of the horseshoe. The reason th…

Excellent explanation. I'd like to add that no light source can lie outside the horseshoe of the CIE xyz diagram: pure wavelengths are points on the curved line, everything that mixes them moves towards the inside of the space. So you're stuck with triangles that fit within it.

I was wondering about that, since some color spaces have their primaries outside the horseshoe. Thanks for clarifying.

Re: Multi-Primary Color Display Emerges as Next-Gen Color Reproduction Technology

#23

Post by rayiner »

noelwelsh wrote: post #2

Can anyone explain how this works? Humans have 3 (sometimes 4) cones, so I thought that going beyond 3 primaries wouldn't increase the perceivable gamut. Update: thanks for all the great explanations!

It's not as simple as "3 cones = 3 primary colors." Each type of cone has a response curve and three curves overlap: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/colcon.htm.... And each cone has different sensitivities (blue is much more sensitive than red and green). So perfectly monochromatic light will stimulate two and usually three cones to varying degrees. When you mix "green" and "red" to get yellow, what you're actually doing is stimulating the green cones (but also the red cones) and the red cones (but also the green cones) in relative proportions that your brain perceives as yellow. But it won't necessarily give you the exact same response of the two cones as monochromatic yellow light.

Re: Multi-Primary Color Display Emerges as Next-Gen Color Reproduction Technology

#25

Post by RetroTechie »

If you're using 4 of them versus 3, wouldn't this require 1/3 more subpixels to achieve the same display resolution in pixels?

Or -using same # of subpixels per cm^2- would perceived display quality be similar due to better color representation?

Re: Multi-Primary Color Display Emerges as Next-Gen Color Reproduction Technology

#28

Post by ripe »

Daneel_ wrote: post #5
noelwelsh wrote: post #2

Can anyone explain how this works? Humans have 3 (sometimes 4) cones, so I thought that going beyond 3 primaries wouldn't increase the perceivable gamut. Update: thanks for all the great explanations!

Cyan is severely under-represented by monitors, so the extra pixel is a dedicated cyan. It dramatically improves the ability to display blue/green colours. *edit: found the link I was after on this: https://moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/where-to-find-the-...

Wow, that's a great article about color! It answers many questions. Thanks for the link.

Re: Multi-Primary Color Display Emerges as Next-Gen Color Reproduction Technology

#29

Post by ricardobeat »

RetroTechie wrote: post #25

If you're using 4 of them versus 3, wouldn't this require 1/3 more subpixels to achieve the same display resolution in pixels? Or -using same # of subpixels per cm^2- would perceived display quality be similar due to better color representation?

Probably yes, but density hasn’t been an issue for over a decade. Mobile device screens are 5-10x denser than TVs, and cost <€100; Apple has used mini-led for their retina displays for a long time too.

Re: Multi-Primary Color Display Emerges as Next-Gen Color Reproduction Technology

#30

Post by PhunkyPhil »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #7
khalic wrote: post #3

Preventing selection is quite the useless and user antagonistic pattern...

Yeah. That was crazy. I've not encountered that, before.

I knew I was a highlighter but reading that showed me how much my brain relies on spam click highlighting to keep my eyes on track. I should probably read more books.
Post reply on HN