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64bit images

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polycounter lvl 11
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Toast polycounter lvl 11
Hi, this is probably the dumbest question I've ever asked on a forum but here it goes.

It seems we had 8-bit, 12-bit/14-bit (DSLR RAW images) and 32-bit floating EXR images....but is there any reason to see anything else beyond this? Is it tecnically or inevitable that there will be 64bit images in the future?

Just wondering if it works like this? :poly136:
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  • monster
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    monster polycounter
    Yeah, in Photoshop change Image/Mode to 32 bits per channel, and you got yourself a 128-bit image. (32 bits * 4 channels)

    I don't know if we will ever use them for games, but apparently the extra bits are used for storing intensity and other information:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_color
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  • Santewi
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    Santewi
    16-bit images can already have 4294967296 different shades of color per channel. 64-bit image would have 18446744073709551616 per channel, and as most monitors can't really display all the different colors of 16-bit images, 64-bit images would really just be a waste of disk space at the moment.

    Maybe when monitors have 1 000 000:1 contrast instead of the 1000:1 or 2000:1 most monitors have right now.
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  • Ace-Angel
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    Ace-Angel polycounter lvl 12
    Santewi wrote: »
    16-bit images can already have 4294967296 different shades of color per channel. 64-bit image would have 18446744073709551616 per channel, and as most monitors can't really display all the different colors of 16-bit images, 64-bit images would really just be a waste of disk space at the moment.

    Maybe when monitors have 1 000 000:1 contrast instead of the 1000:1 or 2000:1 most monitors have right now.

    I was going to say this, considering that we live in a world where loading a webpage is faster then the display on your screen and how many colors it rasterizes, it's abit overkill.

    The most you're going to benefit from it is better color offsets for stuff like VectorDisplacement, but more times then not, even those default to 8 bit and only deal with the compression of an engine and display it as raw.

    We got the tech in terms of software, we just don't have the proper tech in terms of Hardware.
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  • Ashaman73
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    Ashaman73 polycounter lvl 6
    16-bit images can already have 4294967296 different shades of color per channel.
    That is 32-bit, 16-bit has only 65536 ;-)
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  • rollin
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    rollin polycounter
    higher bit depths are for post processing bc you will reduce the quality of the image in the process and therefore you need the extra head room.
    Maybe this could apply to video games in the future if more realtime post processing comes to use. HDR cubemaps already need a higher bit depth. So we'll see ...
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  • Santewi
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    Santewi
    Ashaman73 wrote: »
    That is 32-bit, 16-bit has only 65536 ;-)

    Ah damn, thats what you get for doing something in a hurry.

    But the point stands, 16-bit is more than enough for what you can display with today's hardware.
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