Hmn, interesting read:)

My previous understanding of their demise ran like this:

a) Make great graphics cards that everybody loves
b) ???
c) Bankruptcy!

Now I understand that "???" was "Make inept decisions. And lots of them!" ;)

chanza wrote:

Now I understand that "???" was "Make inept decisions. And lots of them!"

Inept indeed, hosing all the card makers that helped them get to the #1 position was a big reason. The other major one was the decision to trivialize 32-Bit video.

Apparently, according to one of my coder friends, 32-bit colour isn't even enough.

Snover wrote:

...32-bit colour isn't even enough.

Well there is such a thing as "diminishing" returns. The difference between 16-bit and 24-bit fairly easy to so spot with the human eye (although not nearly so much in a FPS, which is kind of what 3dfx was counting on...).

Going from 24bit to 32-bit helps rendering in an image, but you pretty much hit the wall at 24-bit as far as the human eye is concerned. More color is always better, it's just that any future improvements won't be obvious to the average user.

I was looking for a link to a colour pattern or something that shows inadequacies in 32-bit colour. Anyone know of one? Anyone at all?

Diff between 24-bit & 32bit is transparencies. Can see in any game with fog. Just load up Quake 3 in a foggy room and take pics in 16b vs 32bit.

DosFreak wrote:

Diff between 24-bit & 32bit is transparencies.

Forgot about that whole alpha-channel thing...

My friend that alerted me to this sent me the test pattern.
You'll need a really good monitor to see it, but you can actually see blockiness between some of the colour gradients. (each row is composed of 16 colours.)

Definitely not as pronounced as the difference between 16-bit and 24/32-bit colour, however. (I HATE DITHERING! WHY DOES OMIKRON ONLY ALLOW 16-BIT COLOUR? ARRGH!)

Snover wrote:

My friend that alerted me to this sent me the test pattern.

Also known as the background for 80% of all the early Amiga demos. Heh.

Naw, most of those only used 32 colours. 😜

Snover wrote:

Naw, most of those only used 32 colours.

Phbbt! Check again. Have you never heard of a copper list?
http://ieee.ece.utexas.edu/~john/amiga/2ndamiga.html

Most of them used 32 colours, and I'm sticking by that.

Snover wrote:

Most of them used 32 colours, and I'm sticking by that.

Heh. Yeah. 32 here, 32 there, 32 across the top, that's what the copper was for...

Was also good for things like "mixing" resolutions...

...
it scares me.
goodbye.
😀

*sigh* My point was that the "copper" allowed you change the video (be it resolution, palette, depth) "on-the-fly". You still had the limit of 32 colors per scanline (if we ignore the extra-halfbrite mode), but you usually had more than that on-screen because all the tricks going on with the "copper". It even allowed you to mix video modes like 320x200x32 with 640x200x16.

One of the more visually appealing tricks of the copper was to produce smooth color gradient backgrounds. However in the early demo days, the demo programmers were just getting familiar with the copper, so most color gradients came out with glaringly obvious banding. That's what your image was reminding me of... (Woof...more bad English).