Gigacolour in Games?

[3dfx]

Do games support the 10 Bit Gigacolour if so how do I activate it?
thx
Andy

[Pace]

I think they will automatically use if if your desktop is set to it.

P.

[3dfx]

Cheers for the reply PACE m8 I thought that was the case also I was just looking for some confirmation basically and I was also wondering if is affected system performance ?
thx

[UberLord]

Originally posted by Pace
I think they will automatically use if if your desktop is set to it.

P.

You would also need to adjust the default profile and/or game profiles in PowerDesk.

OpenGL games have to be set to the same setting as the desktop - DirectX is interchangable in regard to GigaColour.

[UberLord]

Originally posted by 3dfx
I was just looking for some confirmation basically and I was also wondering if is affected system performance ?

AFAIK there's no or very little performance hit. If there is a hit it's peanuts compared to 16->32bit speed diff.

Handy hint though - don't run Q3 based games with gigacolour and FAA as it highlights a lot of the poly edges. Other games also suffer very slight artifacts (well, i seem em ) with the two combined, namely stray white dots in UT2003 and Morrowind.

[3dfx]

I tried it in CS and I know that the HL engine is limited to 16 bit but everything just appeared will VERY!!! colourful to say the least ..lol I've selected it in Powerdesk is that all I need to do? as in desktop settings it wont go above 32 bit

[3dfx]

For some reason my colours are al messed up like when I playback in Win AMp or when I play cs. The colours are wrong though this is'nt the case for everything, I'm not sure how to explain but have you seen it when a tv displays the wrong colours? like green and pink faces? at first I thought is was the monitor but it doesn't do it in every program? strange

[Wombat]

Sounds like for some reason the programs think they only have 8-bit color available.

[UberLord]

Originally posted by 3dfx
I tried it in CS and I know that the HL engine is limited to 16 bit

You can force CS/HL into 32bpp mode by adding the command options -console -32bpp to the icon

[Maggi]

Just to rephrase it:

For GigaColor in OpenGL you have to set both, your Desktop as well as your Gaming and 3D Settings to GigaColor !

If those two settings don't match, you'll get some sort of fractalized color output (reminds me of Mandelbrot pictures and those alike) ...

For DX games, it's enough to have your Gaming and 3D Settings set to GigaColor, regardless of what your desktop is set to.

[3dfx]

I understand but for some reason I cant set my desktop any higher than 32 bit

[Maggi]

I know, but there's an option to enable GigaColor, seperate from your desktop colordepth ...

it's right next to "Gaming and 3D Settings", called "Desktop Settings" which also gives you options to toggle GlyphAA etc.

[3dfx]

Yeah I'd already done that so that's why I found it strange that I was getting colour problems in certain programs

[UberLord]

Originally posted by 3dfx
Yeah I'd already done that so that's why I found it strange that I was getting colour problems in certain programs

1) Ensure desktop is set to gigacolour
2) Ensure that the game profile or default profile is set to gigacolour
3) Ensure the game is running in 32 bits (for CS/HL you need to add -console -32bpp to the end of the commandline)

If all 3 is correct then the game should look fine as regards to gigacolour

[Kurt]

I read a comment by John Carmack (some time ago) saying that when you used Gigacolor in games the alpha channel was reduced to 2bits (down from 8bits), hence it was useless for him as it degraded the quality of the effects too much.

Anybody can comment on this?