The answer is yes and no depending upon which segment of the market you are talking about. The key question that users and suppliers need to ask is, “does color improve the training proficiency?”
For military flight simulators, the answer is typically no – they really don’t care about color. That’s because most operations and most training is done in dim, dark, foggy, smoky or dusty environments where there is little color perception anyway. For fast jet applications in the day, again color is not that that important, industry experts told us. One might think that color might be important in target discrimination, but it’s not perceived that way today.
For commercial flight simulators where many flights occur in daylight and for many ground-based military simulation applications, one might think better color adds value in terms of increased realism. That may be so, but does it improve training? Does it cost more? Does it have an impact on other pieces of the chain like the image generator or graphics cards?
Companies including Digital Projection were showing some content using their LED projectors that have a near 2020 color gamut capability. But content is not generated in color gamuts any bigger than sRGB typically, so one must “stretch” the colors in the content to display it with a wider color range. Digital Projection did this as an educational experiment to gather feedback, which they said was mostly positive.
Another issue is that no real specifications are included regarding color in most simulation programs. If it is not specified, manufacturers won’t offer it and end users won’t demand it. All will want to see the value of more color and the trade-offs before considering it, it seems.
There are some exceptions. In the medical field, we heard that wide color gamut and color accuracy are very important parameters. Here, the color of tissue says a lot, so it needs to be accurately portrayed.
Another simulation market where color matters is in auto design. Here 12-bit pipelines and a full 2020 color gamut will definitely be desired.
