Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!FelineGrace From: FelineGrace@cup.portal.com (Dana B Bourgeois) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: The Future of HAM Message-ID: <21388@cup.portal.com> Date: 17 Aug 89 23:38:39 GMT References: <1579@psueea.UUCP> <19144@usc.edu> <507@tardis.Tymnet.COM> <795@becker.UUCP> Distribution: na Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 25 Instead of using the TV as a definition of what needs doing to create a lifelike picture, why not use the research on what people can see? Amiga Transactor had an article along these lines awhile back and at one point the author pointed out that while the human eye cannot distinguish 16 million different colors, at least that many are necessary for lifelike images because when color range is limited, a wide range of grayscale is needed to keep the image realistic. The example was imagine the color spread between yellow and red in a 4K color palette. It is probably 20 odd shades of yellow, orange and red. Now what if your object is orange and a shadow is cast upon it? pick two shades of orange and find the range available in 4K colors. It could be only 2 or 3. Because the 4K color pallete is 16 grey scale of three colors. The 16 million color pallete is 256 grey scales of three colors and so when you pick an arbitrary color (which is a combination of RGB) there will be significant grey scale left to give you a lifelike range. OK, doesn't this mean that the ultimate system would be 8 or more pixels of RGB? 24 bits of color, 8 of alpha, 8 of direction (or one for HAM) is still too many for a system in the Amiga market. I think that compromises will have to be made on the 3000 and perhaps on the 4000. But someday all computers will have relistic color images in the Amiga price range. Even I*M! Dana