Is different color vision plausible?

[HyorD]

Just a thought:

The Human visible light spectrum goes from about 380 to 750 nanometers, and we perceive light with an even mix of the wavelengths within that spectrum to be white. This is, supposedly, because our eyes have evolved to pick up on the wavelengths that can pass through our atmosphere, but there are animals on Earth with different visual light spectrums (for instance, many species of bird can see ultra-violet), and aliens from planets with different atmospheric conditions or the like might have different visible light spectrums.
For instance, the sky of Qo'noS usually appears greenish, supposedly because their atmosphere lightly scatters green light much like our scatters blue, and they seem to be comfortable in what appears to us as red light.
This suggests to me that perhaps the Klingon visual spectrum is shifted a bit towards the longer wavelengths, so that green appears blue to them, red appears green and infrared appears red to them, and blue light would be the equivalent of darkness to them.
Also, some races may have wider or more narrow visual light spectrums (Vulcans probably have an extremely wide one, simply because they've always got to be the best at everything).

I figure it must be possible to reflect all of this by using more evolved versions of the RGB color coding (maybe you'd have five hex values instead of three, for instance) and then having a separate algorithm for each species... ...but what would this mean in terms of additional processing time and extra work on the art team's side... ...not to mention confusing players?
I'd like to know if anybody knows of a good way that this could be implemented into a MMOG? I really want to step onto a Federation Starship bridge as a Klingon one day and find that it's disgustingly cyan-colored :P

[Ramierez]

I'm colorblind so any discreet change in this wouldn't be that noticeable to me, though it would be interesting if when you play another race everything looks strange. That might be a bit much for them to decide how an alien sees things would be perceived to a human eye (us), but shifting things uniforming up or down the spectrum shouldn't be a big deal I wouldn't think.

Rather like how most tradition MMO's do night vision with elves vs humans.

[USS_Parallax]

I swear all the color blind and deaf people play MMOs. I know sooo many of 'em.

Anyways this would be a waste of resources better focused elsewhere. If they had infinite resources it would be neat.

[boz75]

Very interesting...but seriously you lost me lol! I wouldn't know without researching if you are stating facts there.
Anyhow I presume that this is involved in your line of work or you have a serious interest in the area!

That type of idea could be implemented into a game I think, but I cannot see anyone actually developing/progressing it further in all honesty. In general I think players will want to see colours as they are so looking at a Yellow/Green Federatation starship or blue space instead of black would be offputting. That's how I would feel if colours I am used to all end up being mixed round.

There are the odd exceptions in games i.e. night vision, infra-red etc that give players a tactical advantage. (There were certain buff's in EQ2 I just had to turn off though because it changed the colours of the world and it was just generally annoying.)

Finally, lets not forget the Predator's different types of vision...or it's kickass weaponary hehe :)

[LordDave]

While your facts are correct, it's irrelevant. How humans perceive a specific wavelength may be vastly different from how another species does, but in the end it doesn't matter.

[IanD967]

why would you want this feature? O_o

[njdss4]

Sorry, but this is such a vague and unimportant thing in the long run. I would much rather have Cryptic spend their time on other things than on this.

[boz75]

While your facts are correct, it's irrelevant. How humans perceive a specific wavelength may be vastly different from how another species does, but in the end it doesn't matter.

Ok, how many people on here are experts of the "visible light spectrum"? :)

[Arrakiv]

I think it would be unfortunate to be on the bridge of a Klingon ship, as a Klingon, and have it not looking like a Klingon ship. :-)

Anyway, its plenty possible to do something like this. Other games have done it - but, I don't see it being terribly important for this game. It might even be a touch annoying.

[USS_Parallax]

Why didn't I see in ultraviolet when I played the Bee Movie game? :(

p.s. I would never actually play that game.

[HyorD]

Hehe, yeah, I was expecting people would react similar to this.

One of the things I do think could be possible (client-side) is change the color of the lights on the Bridge depending on your species, just so that Klingons would see their Bridges bright as day while Starfleet Officers would think they were dim and red. Actually, that's the sort of thing that one could fix using a mod, thereby giving people the right to choose... ...except the EULA wold probably prevent it :P

[antiquechrono]

While your facts are correct, it's irrelevant. How humans perceive a specific wavelength may be vastly different from how another species does, but in the end it doesn't matter.

Quite true, when you see images taken from different spectrums such as IR and UV there are colors put onto the image so that they make sense to us, that is not what it really would look like. There is even good evidence that birds can see the Earth's electromagnetic field.

In the end we need a working game, not bells and whistles.

[J.L.Picard]

its a decent idea but pointless, because to them its no different and if they were to implement that idea they would have to rething the entire colour scheme of everything in the entire game.

[antiquechrono]

its a decent idea but pointless, because to them its no different and if they were to implement that idea they would have to rething the entire colour scheme of everything in the entire game.

No they would not have to redo the entire color scheme of everything in the entire game...

All they would have to do is write some interesting pixel shaders.

Talking about things you do not know about can get you into trouble ;)

[HyorD]

Quite true, when you see images taken from different spectrums such as IR and UV there are colors put onto the image so that they make sense to us, that is not what it really would look like. There is even good evidence that birds can see the Earth's electromagnetic field.Aye, but I'm not talking about things like space photography; I mean things like the color of the sky. You could take a picture of the sky of Qo'noS using a camera that translated green into blue, red into green and a slice of the infrared band into red, and then you'd see a blue sky, but walking around on Qo'noS, it would appear green.

In the end we need a working game, not bells and whistles.Yeah, I'll just have to role-play seeing a different spectrum... ...maybe the devs could keep it in mind for STO3, though ;)

[Raven0238]

I really do not see this as a necessary feature.

[antiquechrono]

Aye, but I'm not talking about things like space photography; I mean things like the color of the sky. You could take a picture of the sky of Qo'noS using a camera that translated green into blue, red into green and a slice of the infrared band into red, and then you'd see a blue sky, but walking around on Qo'noS, it would appear green.

Yeah, I'll just have to role-play seeing a different spectrum... ...maybe the devs could keep it in mind for STO3, though ;)

Sorry, I wasn't very clear on what I meant. All I was saying was that if another species could see light in a spectrum we can't then there is no way to accurately see what they see because we are limited to our own.

Thus when we take pictures in other spectrums we use our own colors to interpret it just like you would use a graph to interpret a numerical data set.

[HyorD]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear on what I meant. All I was saying was that if another species could see light in a spectrum we can't then there is no way to accurately see what they see because we are limited to our own.

Thus when we take pictures in other spectrums we use our own colors to interpret it just like you would use a graph to interpret a numerical data set.Ah, right, I see what you mean, although I think that actually applies from Human to Human, too. However, there are some concrete examples of where one's visible light spectrum would be visible. For instance, if Klingons can't see violet light, you could make sure all the lamps on your ship only emit violet light when Klingons board your ship; it would be completely dark for them.

Also, it determines what sort of details we can see. For instance, this would just be a completely black image to a Klingon: Link (http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/195/visiblelightklingonssg4.jpg)

[Sarevok]

The problem with this I see, would be people who didn't read the manual and therefore don't know about this feature going:
Klingon player:"Why have all the department colours changed?????????"

[Dext]

I swear all the color blind and deaf people play MMOs. I know sooo many of 'em.

Anyways this would be a waste of resources better focused elsewhere. If they had infinite resources it would be neat.

I am with you on this

[Ramierez]

I swear all the color blind and deaf people play MMOs. I know sooo many of 'em.

Anyways this would be a waste of resources better focused elsewhere. If they had infinite resources it would be neat.

Well..it's just that there's a lot more of us than you'd think...we don't go around broadcasting our color deficiency or anything. By the time a colorblind person reaches their teens the whole mismatching color of clothes thing just kinda goes away as we just memorize what does and doesn't based on the clothing, not the color. Just that in a game where you have to direct someone using visual queues such as color and what-not, we're going to be more-likely to tell you.

Really I think it's something like 1 in 10 males have at least partial colorblindness.

But I don't really think this is something that we need concern ourselves about much. It would be neat, as long as it didn't take away from other development. They could use it much like another poster stated where the lights are violet so that if Klingons board your ship, they can't see well or at all. Or because of a heightened acuity, one race is able to perceive things that are invisible to another, much like how I can't see some of the blasted numbers in the dot images on colorblind tests but those with normal or close-enough to normal color vision can. It would lend to some interesting strategies for PvP anyway.

[HyorD]

Aye, rather than actually simulating all of this graphically (which could work well in a next-gen game which uses materials rather than textures, and advanced lighting effects; you could wear a VISOR and do lots of cool things) we could supposedly just let everything look the same for all players (most of us are Human, after all) and use area buffs/debuffs and the like.
For instance, a Klingon might get a slight debuff when on Earth, and a Human might get a slight debuff on Qo'noS, and Vulcans would be totally über all the time. Indeed, we already know that Klingons are great at enduring cold and that Cardassians love heat, so there should be some area-based ability changes in-game, even if unique visible light spectra are not taken into account.