First post, by Great Hierophant
- Rank
- l33t
I found out yesterday that with all standard machine types in DOSBox, color is output and recorded in an 8-bit palettized format except for vgaonly, which is 16-bit RGB. 16-bit RGB per pixel only covers 1/4 of the colors standard VGA can display. Standard VGA allows the Red, Green and Blue levels of a pixel to be independently selected with 6-bits for each color component. This gives 18-bits of RGB color information in total for each pixel. 18-bit gives 262,144 color choices whereas 16-bit gives only 65,536 colors.
vgaonly is typically used when you need to display video that can alter display parameters by scanline. Games that need it to display correctly are Lemmings/Oh No More Lemmings and Pinball Fantasies. Some demos like Copper will break without it. But the colors produced are not necessarily accurate to the hardware. The standard machine types should transform 18-bit RGB to 24-bit RGB for accurate color display.
Can vgaonly be displayed in 24-bit RGB? I understand that when vgaonly was created back in the mid-2000s, PCs weren't quite as powerful as they are today. But they should be sufficiently powerful in 2019 to manage the extra overhead. Is there another reason for the limitation?
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