Does DCS World support 10-bit color?

Greetings Earthlings,

Just another dumb question as per the thread title :)

My HP Omen 32" monitor can display 10-bit color at 60Hz, at least according to Nvidia Control Panel settings, and so can my GTX 1080 Ti. So, I'm wondering if DCS can make use of it somehow, for example, improving color gradients in sky or water? Maybe less color-banding?

I guess this is actually a question for ED themselves, and the best answer is "try it!" :)

Just for the sake of a little jibba-jabba though, as Mr. T would say :)

AD

I don’t think it does. I have a 10-bit HDR monitor as well. For games, they really need HDR support built in.

I don’t think it does. I have a 10-bit HDR monitor as well. For games, they really need HDR support built in.

technically you should not need high dynamic range rendering to utilize 10 bit interfaces, however you are still right in that i know of no games that would utilize 10 bit output without hdr.

it's really stupid though, if you think about it. there are plenty of monitors with 10 bit interfaces, that do not support any hdr standards.

in an ideal world every game should have the option to render to 10 bit and an "dynamic range / color space" option seperate from that.

It does look nice in 10-bit...

One thing to note though... You have to make a registry edit to get Win 10 to use high dynamic range on the desktop (you can see the diff) and you also need to tell the NVidia driver to use full range as well. If we're talking about the same stuff...

I use NV_FullRangeToggle.exe myself, then set output dynamic range to full in the driver settings.

Does DCS World support 10-bit color?

windows and the graphics drivers have supported 10-bit color for years and years.

the issue has always been the output device (monitor) and the source (games).

if you have one of those new black friday 10-bit output devices, you have everything you need, except source (game) support.

Thanks for the input everyone, I certainly know my monitor supports 10-bit color at 60Hz because it shows up in NVCP as an option (not when it's at 75Hz though).

I was just wondering if DCS itself was written to make use of it. Games generally use 8-bit color, which is fine--until you're looking straight up at the sky :) That's the only time I can see the color banding.

AD

I've tried it not so long ago, and if i can clearly see the difference between YCbCr limited range and RGB Full range (0-255) where colors are way more vivid on my screen, I haven't seen any difference between 8-bits RGB and 10-bits RGB, (altough my monitor is a 8b AFRC (a real fake 10bits somehow))

8bits

10bits

10bits REC 709

My test setup was a "redish moon" south of sochi and an almost clear sky.

The moon light created a real nasty banding in the dark sky in 2160p

BUT !

I tried on my Plasma TV (Panasonic VT30) Wich is only 8b RGB, and, even if it was only in 1080p, it was majestic! The natural grain created by this technology, and high contrast tv produced a very good image quality and "almost" no banding. 2 problems : only HD resolution, and draws more power than my i7+GTX 1080 together.

So, no, DCS is not in 10bit colors, sorry.

I use an eizo monitor hardware calibrated for color work flow in photography and dcs look sweet when I switch to srgb big difference kinda horrible flat looking.

I don't have too much insight the other way around but I'm pretty sure that only Nvidias Quadro or AMDs Pro or CAD cards have a true 10bit output.

The consumer cards just extrapolating the colors. Looks better but isn't real e.g. bt2020.

I just had my nose in these topics as I wanted to step up with my Films/Videos produced in a closed 10 bit chain.

Edit: Just found out that 10-bit works for DirectX now. Consumer Cards still doesn't put out professional 10-bit in OpenGL though.

It does look nice in 10-bit...

 

One thing to note though... You have to make a registry edit to get Win 10 to use high dynamic range on the desktop (you can see the diff) and you also need to tell the NVidia driver to use full range as well. If we're talking about the same stuff...

 

I use NV_FullRangeToggle.exe myself, then set output dynamic range to full in the driver settings.

Does it seem better to you in 10-bit color?

BTW Dynamic Range has nothing to do with color gradient. It's the brightness difference between the lightest and darkest colors that can be displayed, not the number of steps that the color range is divided up into.

But yes, dynamic range should always be set to Full and I don't know why you'd ever want to use Limited, unless the screen is older and requires it.

AD

I've tried it not so long ago, and if i can clearly see the difference between YCbCr limited range and RGB Full range (0-255) where colors are way more vivid on my screen...

 

So, no, DCS is not in 10bit colors, sorry.

Cool, now I know, thanks! :)

AD

AD, are you familiar with a program called Reshade? There is a filter called ”deband” which helps quite a bit with gradient skybox.

One thing to note though... You have to make a registry edit to get Win 10 to use high dynamic range on the desktop (you can see the diff) and you also need to tell the NVidia driver to use full range as well. If we're talking about the same stuff...

Actually you can toggle HDR on an off in W10 Settings

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4040263/windows-10-hdr-advanced-color-settings

Honestly the desktop looks terrible in HDR because it’s not meant to run it. You would just enable HDR when running HDR games or content. DCS will switch my monitors HDR mode off automatically when running it.

it's really stupid though, if you think about it. there are plenty of monitors with 10 bit interfaces, that do not support any hdr standards.

Which is wrong. For some reason PC monitors have been slow to adopt HDR. But without the specification, the display wouldn’t know what to do with a 10-bit color space.

Which is wrong. For some reason PC monitors have been slow to adopt HDR. But without the specification, the display wouldn’t know what to do with a 10-bit color space.

sure, it would have to be a game option for the user to select color space, dynamic range and interface type (8bit/channel|10bit/channel).

for the general consumer, the hdr spec is fine, i guess, however it is still stupid that users with color grade monitors, that well exceed srgb in gamut and typical (!) contrast (i know it's not defined in the "old" color spaces), have to dial back their monitors to srgb 8 bit/channel for gaming.

it's not a fault of the hdr spec, but the laziness of game devs to only offer "srgb"/8bit, or in newer cases hdr10 specs.

since modern game engines work with PBR and pp color mapping, i don't see any reason why the renderer could not output in 10bit/channel to a user defined color space and to a user defined dynamic range.

Does DCS World support 10-bit color?

technically possible is one thing.

supported with money and effort is another.

the truth is that there is little profit to be made in this space.

and i should note, you don’t have dial back a monitor. it will just work.

it's not a fault of the hdr spec, but the laziness of game devs to only offer "srgb"/8bit, or in newer cases hdr10 specs.

I have no idea what it takes to make a game HDR compatable. I’ve read that 10-bit color takes more memory but really I have no idea. For sure though, a flight sim would really benefit from the expanded color gamut. It would certainly help solve all the trouble people have seeing other aircraft.

Thing is, why is the sky banding in this game so bad?

Have a look through this thread at Guru3d

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/dithering-option.419748/page-4#post-5615490

might have some useful clues.

I'm not sure its a hw/driver issue? I mean i think it's only this game i ever noticed it & only during sunset/rise. Maybe i could run some tests.

Edit:

So after further reading into this thanks to Mustangs link it's probably a simple matter of software dithering? We shouldn't see it in 8 or 10bit.

Thing is, why is the sky banding in this game so bad?

VERY good question!

Thing is, why is the sky banding in this game so bad?

I think any 8-bit color is going to show banding. The reason for going to 10-bit is that it won’t.

2 bits will fix all the banding issues?

Depending on the step size, but short answer is yes.

8bit colour contains 256 colour in the three channels (r,g,b): 256x256x256=16.7million colours

10bit contains 1024: 1.07billion colours

The problem with that though is: More colours = more data

If it is the nature of the beast, so that 8-bit will always more or less produce the sky ribbons, then

that would be bad as I love my monitor despite it's only 8-bit.

It was nice if that could be done by ED devs so all players could benefit from the possible fix in

distant future.

Maybe when weather and clouds get adressed, wouldnt that match the task ?

Let me ask this from a novice point of view when it comes to colour palette and associated arts &

skills:

Aren't 16.7 million colours ( steps ) enough to make a certain range in the blue spectrum, somewhere around 420-450nm I guess, appear seamingless ?

I would buy that with maybe 65k colours, ok, but 16.7m leaves more than 1m colours for each

hour sized slice around the clock/palette.

I hope that makes sense o_0