Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!psuvax1!burdvax!sdcrdcf!trwrb!cadovax!keithd
From: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Wishlist for A3000
Message-ID: <1871@cadovax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Nov-87 20:07:46 EST
Article-I.D.: cadovax.1871
Posted: Mon Nov 16 20:07:46 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Nov-87 06:53:01 EST
References: <74@mothra> <33314@sunnny.side.up> <2213@gryphon.CTS.COM> <1364@squeaker.munsell.UUCP>
Reply-To: keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle)
Organization: Contel Business Systems, Torrance, CA
Lines: 30

In article <1364@squeaker.munsell.UUCP> klm@squeaker.UUCP (Kevin [Being Weird Isn't Enough] McBride) writes:
>Higher res, yes!  16 meg colors?  WHY??!!  Your eye can't see that many!
>Granted that for doing real image processing you need that precision
>internally (8 bits each of R,G, and B; or uvL or what have you), but for
>display purposes you only need between 2K and 4K colors to get excellent
>results on a HIGH RES monitor (at least 1K x 1K.)  Any more colors than that
>and you go into overkill mode, which makes your hardware very expensive.
>Yes, there are 24 bit frame buffers out there.  Check out the price tag on
>one sometime.  Quite a bit more than you paid for your Amiga.
>
>IMHO, you can get just as good display quality with 12 bits out, IF you know
>what you are doing.  (i.e., you need to do a little bit more than just linear
>compression through a hardware LUT.)  

Uh, I beg to differ.  Think about it.  4k colors are 4 bits each for
R G and B.  16 levels of grey scale is the bare acceptable minimum.
While with 4 bits each of R G B, you can get a full 16 shades of 7 colors,
i.e. red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, and white, you will be
hard pressed to get a "tinted" greyscale of "bluish-purple" or "purplish-
red" (for example) that presents a smooth scale.

No, 4k is definately NOT ENOUGH.  I don't know just how much *is* enough,
but it ain't 4096.

BTW, doesn't the Mimetics 24 bit 640x400 frame buffer come in at $700-$800?
If that's "quite a bit more than you paid for your Amiga", I'd like to know
where you bought your Amiga.  

Keith Doyle
#  {ucbvax,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd  Contel Business Systems 213-323-8170