I’m mostly working with Gamma rather than Linear in my projects.
But what is “better” in general? What do you guys prefer/use?
(Also, if you have any resources for reading, please share.)
Linear is better, with gamma you get subtle artefacts and incorrect lighting as in general all the maths in a shader is and has always assumed to be in linear colour space, which obviously it hasn’t. One simple example is that your specular highlights will be white with linear, but with gamma they tend to get colourised at the edges. Another example is that the color tone of an object will change as light intensity increases with subtle hue shifts.
Generally working in linear space makes far more sense from a maths/physics perspective and more intuitive to work with.
However whether linear is important enough for you to bother with is a different matter. Sure real-time graphics are currently moving from gamma to linear mainly due to the uptake with physically based shading/lighting, HDR etcwhere it makes more sense. The AAA and even AA space is always striving for better quality visuals and greater realism, so it makes sense. However for an indie game, that is perhaps already artistically stylised moving to linear fo the sake of it doesn’t really make much sense.
If you want to learn more try these links
GPU Gems - The Importance of being Linear
Filmic Games - Linear Lighting
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That fellow pretty much nailed it but gamma somewhat distorts tones, usually to cater for the display device, linear is straightforward. You’ll see instantly you’ll lose contrast when you switch to linear and go ‘well why’d i do that it looks rubbish’, but you’re meant to use it along with hdr rendering, tonemapping and colour correction and wotnot (assuming you have pro), which gives you far finer control over your dynamic range and tones and ultimately your image quality and looks, that should turn out far better and more artistically controlled than just leaving the gamma box checked. Try do a typical workflow meant for linear with gamma and it could just go from bad to worse.
I will always go with Linear… It looks better, more realistic…and easy to control the level of quality…
Issue I’ve had with Linear colour space is grass and as there’s lot’s of it seems an odd issue. When grass flexes with a wind zone it appears black until it balances, so unless I’m doing something daft it seems the lighting get’s messed up somewhere.