Colour profiles in games. The new "widescreen" controversy.

[lobski]

I posted this on [h] a while back, but I'll post it here.

Basically, I believe that lack of custom color support in fullscreen games are quite similar to the lack of widescreen resolutions gamers had to endure through many years ago. I wish to raise awareness about the lack of custom colour profile in games, just as many of us did with widescreen resolutions years ago!

I then wanted to create a lobbying/aware site like WSGF but instead of widescreen, the focus is on custom colours... What do you guys think?

The original post:
(This post is mostly aimed at gamers)

WSGF is an internet community based around Widescreen/Eyefinity/hires gaming and displays in general. They raise awareness and sometimes even lobby. It's been quite successful over the years. I am sure everyone in this forum knows of this place.

There seems to be another aspect of displays that doesn't get much notice. Colour profiles. As many of you probably know, getting a game to keep your calibrated colours in fullscreen can be a chore if the game does not implement it properly. Many high budget (and low) are increasingly giving widescreen support, but the notion of colour profiles has yet to be popularized. Simply put, the developers do not see it as a big concern. But I am betting that many gamers with calibrated colours cannot stand their full screen games being reset to default colours like I do! Many triple-A titles like Dawn of War 2, ArmA, Dragon Age, etc currently do NOT support preserving colour profiles. Luckily, some newer games are coming out with the options of "borderless window" which allows the game to remain looking "full screen" while retaining the calibrated colours. But these options are few and far in between (there are third-party solutions to create borderless windows to any running program, but it's a workaround and does not work all the time).

Some may ask that the question of preserving colour profiles is not up to the game, but the video drivers or the OS. While it can depend greatly on the video drivers (for example, using Powerstrip on ATI cards, the user can preserve colours in fullscreen games indefinitely, but not on later nVidia cards), the if the game as sufficient implementation, it can work great, even without the OS and the video driver. Colour profiles work on some games, and sometimes they do not.

In short:
Many games are coming out with excellent widescreen support, yet the lack of attention paid to calibrated colours is disappointing. We should change this.
Workarounds include: Running the game in a window. Running the game in a borderless window. Using external dll injectors to force colour locks (not 100%).

So I am thinking about starting a site or something that I hope will be in similar footsteps as WSGF. They first started out small and "niche" but they've had great impact in the industry and the general gaming public. I think the next step we need to address is the colour profiles in games.

The best outcome would be developers to see the implementation of preserving colour profiles as mandatory, just like supporting widescreen resolutions.

If this site were to be started, would many be interested in it? Are there any gamers out there that actually do not care about calibrated colours in games, as long as they are calibrated outside of games? Is this too niche or too insignificant? Did I just waste 15 minutes writing this thread?

[yogibbear]

I like the idea... but this is going to be really hard as it's a lot easier to post up videos/pictures of widescreen related issues... but a lot harder to do the same for colour issues and so the communication aspects required to keep an entire website devoted to that would be quite complicated from an outsider's perspective. So once it is setup i will be interested in how you go about communicating/explaining the core issues for game releases.

[lobski]

I like the idea... but this is going to be really hard as it's a lot easier to post up videos/pictures of widescreen related issues... but a lot harder to do the same for colour issues and so the communication aspects required to keep an entire website devoted to that would be quite complicated from an outsider's perspective. So once it is setup i will be interested in how you go about communicating/explaining the core issues for game releases.

Obviously screenshots are out of the question, since it won't show the symptoms. I'll probably dedicate my time taking high-quality pictures of my monitor, showing the difference in default/custom colours in games. I have a DSLR, so it shouldnt be too difficult.

I know this problem may sound too "niche," for some, but that same argument has been said about widescreen resolutions some time ago :wink:

[Paradigm Shifter]

I'm for it - problem is, when 90% of gamers use 6-bit Twisted Nematic panels (which give poor colours to begin with) and don't even realise the problem as long as the game "works"... I worry that you're fighting a losing battle.

[yogibbear]

I'm for it - problem is, when 90% of gamers use 6-bit Twisted Nematic panels (which give poor colours to begin with) and don't even realise the problem as long as the game "works"... I worry that you're fighting a losing battle.

Yeah the battle needs to be fought at the panel makers... but will people really buy more expensive panels? (I mean widescreen monitors took off but they're weren't exactly more expensive that 4:3/5:4) for the same no. of inches.

[DaFox]

I'm for it - problem is, when 90% of gamers use 6-bit Twisted Nematic panels (which give poor colours to begin with) and don't even realise the problem as long as the game "works"... I worry that you're fighting a losing battle.

90%? You're being humble. I'd bet that its 90% on here alone. 95%+ in the real world. :?

[Tanuki]

I am happy if I can just get a baseline image to calibrate the gamma.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Yeah the battle needs to be fought at the panel makers... but will people really buy more expensive panels? (I mean widescreen monitors took off but they're weren't exactly more expensive that 4:3/5:4) for the same no. of inches.

When they first came out, they were extortionately expensive. I remember seeing the Dell 2405FPW for £1300 when it first launched, and the Dell 3007WFP was well over £2000 at launch. Also, there were no 'low end' widescreens. Now, a low end widescreen can be snapped up for £90, and with the exception of the seriously high end stuff, a 24" panel can be had for £450 for a very, very good one (Dell U2410).

90%? You're being humble. I'd bet that its 90% on here alone. 95%+ in the real world. :?

I originally said 95%, then thought I'd give people the benefit of the doubt. ;)

[lobski]

[quote]I'm for it - problem is, when 90% of gamers use 6-bit Twisted Nematic panels (which give poor colours to begin with) and don't even realise the problem as long as the game "works"... I worry that you're fighting a losing battle.

90%? You're being humble. I'd bet that its 90% on here alone. 95%+ in the real world. :?

Well perhaps, but there are plenty people with hardware calibrators out there.

Let's see, custom colours are mostly used by people who own a hardware calibrator, right?

People who most likely use hardware calibrators:
Photographers
Photoshoppers
Web designers
Video developers
etc...

And at least SOME of them must be PC gamers of some sort, I'm not sure how to approximate how many of these professions requiring a hardware calibrator are gamers, but it's probably safe to say at least half of them (?).

Anyway, it is really quite annoying not being able to retain calibrated colours in fullscreen games.

And I know that the majority won't care (I recently asked in a forum of a game that's being currently developed to add this support, but a developer replied back saying "what?".... :doh :doh ) but I don't think it's a big nor difficult change for developers to start using this, OR at least give the games "borderless window" options, as a viable workaround.

After some time searching, I found Ian, author of ColorClutch. Basically, he's one of the few people who got sick of fullscreen games losing colour profiles and decided to do something about it. His program works for many games, but it doesn't in many other games. Not to mention the process is somewhat intrusive, it works by injecting a dll into the running process. I sent him an email regarding the situation, and here's the reply I got back:

Hey,

Ah, it's good to hear someone is making good use of Color Clutch (at least in offline games). It's unfortunate that nVidia restricts you in such a manner on their newer cards. The Powerstrip developer is surely more knowledgeable than I am in this area, and if he says it's very unlikely there will be any change from nVidia, he's probably right, unfortunately. That said, the GTX 480 is still a very new card, so only time will tell. It sounds like nVidia isn't interested in allowing this sort of hack, and even if they wanted to, they have quite a handful of more important issues to deal with now--low yields on the GTX 4xx cards, and the overheating issues in their laptop graphics cards finally coming to light (thanks to Starcraft 2).

As for being flagged, VAC banned, or anything else in multiplayer, I make no promises, but a place to start would be on the forums--well, for steam anyway. I'm also not sure if there's even a way to get it to inject into a steam game, as I need to start the process from the injector currently, and I believe with any software from steam, you have to let steam start the game. In the future I will hopefully get around to adding chain loading capability, which should let you use it even with other launchers. For the mean time, I've asked on the steam forums about the possibility of VAC bans related to CC.

As for an updated version of CC that's less invasive, it's unlikely, for a couple reasons. First off, I want to stay in user space. Kernel space would allow for additional methods, but it's arguably more invasive, and can lead to system instability if I'm not perfect--and as careful as I am, bugs are unavoidable. The saving grace is your system doesn't BSoD if you mess something up in user land, so CC will stay there. That being, there's really only one other method I can think of off the top of my head that would work, and that is a Direct3D wrapper. I want to avoid this for several reasons, but primarily the versioning issues with wrappers--when the D3D DLL is updated, usually the wrapper has to be as well, and this can cause all sorts of headaches for the end user.

As far as "deleting" the default sRGB profile, that isn't possible, AFAIK. The way profiles appear to work in Windows is by giving a response curve *relative* to the standard sRGB curves--thus, if you were to remove the original sRGB curve, your profile would also be rendered useless. This may be incorrect, but even so, I don't think there's any way to safely prevent the built in default at whatever level they're implemented (software or hardware). The main reason developers in general don't care about calibration is that so few users bother to calibrate their monitors, and even if they did, it's unlikely they'd notice much difference when the color reverts, as monitors typically have fairly close color rendition. I was fortunate enough to get a very bad one (or maybe all the monitors of this model are bad?), and it's very obvious when the color is off, especially on midtones and highlights. Maybe the calibration tool provided with Windows 7 will help, but I doubt most will bother with it.

Thanks for the feedback.

I also emailed Ian a copy of this thread. Maybe he'll sign up here or something.

CALIBRATED COLOURS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

[Paradigm Shifter]

I think it would be safer to say that at most 10% of those with colour calibration hardware for their monitors also game on the same system.

In fact, I can only think of one WSGF member off the top of my head that I seem to remember having colour calibration hardware - X-Warrior.

It can't be that hard to do, agreed. That being said, how many games have I played recently that are basically just brown and grey, with perhaps the odd splash of red when the blood starts flying? ;) Quite a number. :(

I've used colour calibrated hardware on one system that I remember - and that was a photo/video editing system that I didn't set up to game on (actually, it wasn't mine, I built it for a friend who wanted a photo editing setup) so I've no personal experience of gaming on a colour calibrated system. :oops:

[lobski]

I think it would be safer to say that at most 10% of those with colour calibration hardware for their monitors also game on the same system.

10%? I think that's a bit too low, don't you think? I find that many photographers and webdesigners are usually gamer geeks (that also use their workmachine as playmachines)

In fact, I can only think of one WSGF member off the top of my head that I seem to remember having colour calibration hardware - X-Warrior.

I bought one just purely for gaming :P (spyder3)

Also just ONE? That's quite shocking, since I thought WSGF was made up of panel enthusiasts.

It can't be that hard to do, agreed. That being said, how many games have I played recently that are basically just brown and grey, with perhaps the odd splash of red when the blood starts flying? ;) Quite a number. :(

I've used colour calibrated hardware on one system that I remember - and that was a photo/video editing system that I didn't set up to game on (actually, it wasn't mine, I built it for a friend who wanted a photo editing setup) so I've no personal experience of gaming on a colour calibrated system. :oops:

It doesn't matter what colour the game is in exactly, its the overlaying "hue" that gives the game an overall "correct feel". Think of it as watching a movie/game through a dirty window (uncalibrated) vs a clean window (calibrated). Granted, if you look through a dirty window for years and years you will get used to it, but for someone like me who uses custom/calibrated colours, switching to a game that doesn't support it is like switching to a dirty, yellow-stained underwear after wearing clean underwear for a long time.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Perhaps my 10% figure was a bit low; I don't really hang around photography forums on the 'net - most of my photography friends are people I hang out with on an almost daily basis in real life and I guarantee you none of them are gamers. So on a photography forum it might be a bit different. :)

...

Not everyone advertises everything they buy (reasonable) and while I (and many others) can easily tell the difference in colour between a 6-bit panel and an 8-bit panel, I suppose many are less fussed about 'precision' colour space. As long as there is no obvious tint to one colour or another, we're happy. ;)

...

That was a bad analogy. Ew. *searches for puke smiley*

[lobski]

If you can, borrow a calibrator and calibrate your monitor's colours. Games and the desktop environment in general look much better. YMMV of course, but the default colorus on my monitor are very washed out, making everything look like crap. Calibrated colours are an absolute need for me. (especially in games)

[SarX]

I too run a color calibrator (Spyder3 elite) but on TN panels :/
But since a single 24" monitor here costs as much as 3 identical ones in the US for example i don't really have the option of anything else unless i stick to one monitor. (Hah, not gonna happen.. eyefinity changed my e-life)

Anyways, just wanted to add that theres atleast 3 ppl with calibrators on WSGF :p

[Paradigm Shifter]

Would probably be worth it for my centre monitor, but made more difficult by the use of different monitors on the sides in my Surround rig - and the fact that neither ATi nor nVidia allow separate colour calibrations for each monitor. Although that's more likely a Windows thing...

...

SarX - haha, OK, now I know of three. ;)

[lobski]

You can't calibrate the three monitors individually and load up those individual profiles on each of the monitors? It seems quite an elementary thing for Windows (or another program like Powerstrip) to load up separate colour profiles on different monitors.

Perhaps Powerstrip can already do this?

[DaFox]

I have a calibrator too PS!

That being said I agree with you PS, the vast majority of professions that you listed lobski are not gamers, in fact most of them likely use OSX.

[lobski]

I'm not sure if it's most, but there are plenty of PC gamers with hardware calibrators out there!

[DaFox]

Is there any documentation on how one might implement this into their engine aside from the noted Windowed Fullscreen/noborder?

[lobski]

Is there any documentation on how one might implement this into their engine aside from the noted Windowed Fullscreen/noborder?

I am unsure of the technical aspects of this. But for some reason, many games launch in full-screen "reverts" the colours back to default ones. Probably something to do with the video drivers. Ian (the author of cclutch) can probably explain more in detail if he decides to sign up.

Powerstrip's workaround (a very good one at that) is for the program to bypass the OS/video driver and force the video hardware directly to switch colour profiles. Unfortunately, this bypass hasn't gone too well with Nvidia, and they blocked it. So it is impossible on the newer Nvidia cards. Still works fine on ATI though.

edit: Oh yeah, and a gamer doesn't always HAVE to have a hardware calibrator. He or she may load up custom colour profiles using the tool of his or her eye and tweaking. :)