[Irinikus]

While helping @Sheridan on SGUG troubleshoot his colour setup, I noticed that the V12 does indeed support 30 colour planes! So today I took the chance and successfully managed to set the system up to use 30 colour planes instead of the usual 24 that I had set:

[gijoe77]

pretty neat! Any idea what that means though? I believe truecolor means it's still a 24-bit value and can display 16 million colors - I always assumed that's what the "-depth 24" meant, not really sure what planes mean...

[Irinikus]

The "24-bit" refers to 24 colour planes and "30-bit" refers to 30 colour planes, according to the readout in the console(If I'm understanding it correctly). You appear to have four times a s many colour map entries when running in "30-bit" mode! (1024 vs 256 per subfield).

[commodorejohn]

I admit, I'm curious if the actual output is capable of 10-bit depth, or if it's just something the card is capable of using for internal calculations. Still, nifty :)

[stormy]

I admit, I'm curious if the actual output is capable of 10-bit depth, or if it's just something the card is capable of using for internal calculations. Still, nifty

That's cool, wasn't the Matrox Parhelia the first consumer PC card that supported 10-bit depth frame buffer? Is that the same as 30bit on the desktop?

Display controller component supports 10-bit color frame buffer (called "Gigacolor") with 10-bit 400 MHz RAMDACs on 2 RGB ports and 230 MHz RAMDAC on TV encoder port, which was an improvement over its competitors. The frame buffer is in RGBA (10:10:10:2) format, and supports full gamma correction.Display controller component supports 10-bit color frame buffer (called "Gigacolor") with 10-bit 400 MHz RAMDACs on 2 RGB ports and 230 MHz RAMDAC on TV encoder port, which was an improvement over its competitors. The frame buffer is in RGBA (10:10:10:2) format, and supports full gamma correction.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_Parhelia#Features

[jpstewart]

I seem to remember at the time of the VPro the 30-bit colour and 10-bit grayscale capabilities were mentioned in the context of medical imaging.  Things like MRIs and X-rays.  Of course photographers and other graphics professionals like it, too.

Not a lot of monitors support it, though.  Certainly the medical imaging monitors do (the Barco Radiforce series comes to mind;  Eizo also has a highly respected product line) but they're crazy expensive.  Does anyone know of a widely available and affordable monitor that supports 30-bit colour?

[robespierre]

Does anyone know of a widely available and affordable monitor that supports 30-bit colour?

Yes, any CRT. (ducks)

The NEC SpectraView EA/PA series usually support 30-bit color, as do the Barco and Eizo medical displays you mentioned.