Technical Details
Our current system is 8-bit color, meaning that for each pixel, the signal contains eight bits for each of the three primary colors, or 24 bits total. Since there are 256 possible 8-bit binary numbers, you get 256 shades each of red, green, and blue. Combine the three together, and you get 16,777,216 possible colors (256 cubed).
That sounds like plenty, and to the naked eye, it is. But subtle differences between those 256 shades, impossible with 8-bit color, can help create depth and a sense of reality.
That’s where deep color comes in. With 10-bit color, you get 1,024 shades of each primary color, and over a billion possible colors. With 12-bit, that’s 4,096 shades and over 68 billion colors.
We have so many talented Developers on Roblox and it is wasteful of a great opportunity by not giving them the tools they need they deserve.
My proposal is this; it’s 2020 and there are so many great Artist on Roblox with so much potential to create astonishing graphic assets in games, however with only 8-bits of Color depth Roblox is very limiting to creativity and imagination of creators whom would otherwise be able to fully express their vision with a larger color palette.
We need any upgrade to the Color system, this is even more of a necessity now that we finally have Gradients.
Relevant information about Color
6 Likes
I do generally like the idea of having higher bit depth, but in what case will that help on Roblox? Do you have any specific use cases?
I can’t say I’ve ever consciously thought, “I sure wish I could adjust X color channel by 0.1%, that would really match my vision.” The primary thing I find useful when it comes to bit depth is the utility it provides when doing things like color correction or visual effects–the extended information is used to more accurately resolve the final image. These are not things that can be applied to Roblox (unless we do ever get access to VideoFrames, in which case the image would be insanely compressed anyway…) Unless you’re watching a master copy of a movie on a giant TV screen, you’ll have a hard time actually telling the difference between 8 bit and 10 bit images.
6 Likes
I strongly disagree.
Roblox is a Video Game platform.
Graphics is all about Visuals, we get our perception of the game through sight.
While having 10 Bits or even 12 Bits doesn’t make a game necessarily better in-terms of gameplay, it does have a massive impact on visuals and henceforth our emotions.
Have you ever played a game that looked so stunning even tho the gameplay wasn’t that good you still liked playing that game? I bet you have!
I’m a programmer, not necessarily an Artist but I can tell you that better graphics can make a game a 10/10 from 9/10
All I am asking is for Roblox to catch up with the industry and give us the tools we deserve, not because of ridiculous use cases like increasingly a color saturation by 0.00001% but for Roblox to give us better tools to make better games
3 Likes
Increasing bit depth has a significant performance impact on an engine that is supposed to run on mobile devices. Nobody cares about bit depth either. The platform is supported by people who are very possibly unable to notice the difference in colors, and regardless will not care because their reasons for using the platform are different. There aren’t a lot of Roblox games that put tons of effort into graphics (to the point where bit depth makes a difference), and that seems to be indicative that this isn’t even that useful for most developers anyway. The few Roblox games that actually put significant effort into looking good do look nice, and maybe that could be improved, but they’re a minority that doesn’t bring much revenue to Roblox. It would be far more practical for Roblox to do other things.
5 Likes
Bit depth ~= better graphics.
8-bit color depth is already very good and most people wouldn’t be able to make out any difference between an 8-bit image and a 10-bit image without zooming in and squinting–not something that would be happening in a 60FPS game. On top of this, 10-bit monitors are prohibitively expensive (cheaper ones seem to go for around $400) and very uncommon. To me, asking Roblox to support 10-bit is like asking them to support 8k–almost nobody’s devices support it, and the few ones who do won’t be able to notice much of a difference if any at all.
It would make much more sense for Roblox to focus their efforts on improving the engine in ways that can be seen by all users, such as new lighting effects (DepthOfField is spicy) as opposed to large but ultimately hard-to-notice changes.
5 Likes
