🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3csf57$l...@mojo.eng.umd.edu> doc...@eng.umd.edu (John Sabean) writes:
>Actually, some of the SGI's can do more than 24 bit color. I forget if it
>is 32 or 64 bit, but I know its more than 24 bit. I had the same discussion
>with a few friends, "Could you feasibly ever need it or use it?"  We couldn't
>really think of any applications for it. We got this information from a catalog
>from Silicon Graphics. It does indeed exist..... (Those guys are crazy! :)

You can't think of applications for it because you don't do graphics for
a living.  I work for Autodesk, makers of 3D Studio (a rather, ahem, 
well-known 3D graphics package).  3D Studio, as of release 4, does
much of its internal rendering in a 64-bit color space.  Why?  Because
the human eye can distinguish an absolutely huge number of colors,
especially when slightly different colors are visually adjacent.  Ever
heard of gamma correction?  It is modifications to color space made to
compensate for the color distortions of particular monitors or
printers.  24 bits is not enough to do gamma correction properly.

I don't know of any PC graphics boards that can display more than 24
bits per pixel, but the extra color information is put to good use in
choosing exactly what those 24 bits will be.  The 64-bit depth of 3D
Studio (a PC program, btw) gives images much more "richness" and
"depth" (according to our marketing literature and our customers'
comments).  Don't underestimate your eyeballs... they are very very
good at what they do, and computers are only just catching up.


-- 
Rob Jellinghaus       ro...@netcom.com       uunet!netcom!robj