A Pixel Format Guide (to the galaxy)

October 5, 2017  

I spend a lot of my time in various corners of the graphics domain of the FOSS world. In my time there I frequently have to deal with a variety of pixel formats definitions. Every graphics API and project has its own way of describing and naming pixel formats — the different flavors used by Vulkan, OpenGL, Mesa, Gallium, Wayland, DRM, GBM, Pixman, Mir and SDL are just a few of the beasts one can encounter in the graphics wilderness.

It could be my aging memory, but, for some reason, I never seem to be able to remember how to interpret all the different formats. "How are the components laid out in memory?", "Does it matter if the system is little-endian or big-endian?" are some of the questions I often have to look up, with varying degrees of success.

It turns out that I am not the only one facing this issue. It's not uncommon for developers to misinterpret pixel formats, often with entertaining and psychedelic effects. If you are lucky you may catch a glimpse of uncanny blue foxes running under alien red skies.

Despite the potential for entertainment, this problem is a constant cause of frustration for developers. I finally decided to do something about it — I have started the Pixel Format Guide.

The Pixel Format Guide consists of two components. The first is the guide itself — a collection of documents describing how to interpret the pixel format definitions of various APIs and projects.

The second component is the pfg tool which performs the interpretation of pixel formats automatically. Did you ever wonder how the GL_RGBA with GL_UNSIGNED_INT_2_10_10_10_REV OpenGL pixel format is laid out in memory? Now it's easy to figure it out:

$ python3 -m pfg describe GL_RGBA+GL_UNSIGNED_INT_2_10_10_10_REV
Format:               GL_RGBA+GL_UNSIGNED_INT_2_10_10_10_REV
Described as:         Native 32-bit type
Native type:          M                              L
                      AABBBBBBBBBBGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRR
Memory little-endian: 0        1        2        3
                      M      L M      L M      L M      L
                      RRRRRRRR GGGGGGRR BBBBGGGG AABBBBBB
Memory big-endian:    0        1        2        3
                      M      L M      L M      L M      L
                      AABBBBBB BBBBGGGG GGGGGGRR RRRRRRRR

How about the WL_DRM_FORMAT_ARGB8888 Wayland-DRM format? Again, it's easy:

$ python3 -m pfg describe WL_DRM_FORMAT_ARGB8888
Format: WL_DRM_FORMAT_ARGB8888
Described as: Bytes in memory
Memory little-endian: 0        1        2        3
                      M      L M      L M      L M      L
                      BBBBBBBB GGGGGGGG RRRRRRRR AAAAAAAA
Memory big-endian:    0        1        2        3
                      M      L M      L M      L M      L
                      BBBBBBBB GGGGGGGG RRRRRRRR AAAAAAAA

The Pixel Format Guide is a work in progress. It currently supports many Vulkan, OpenGL and Wayland(-DRM) formats, and it's constantly growing. This project was conceived as a collaborative endeavor, not a one-person effort (but I'll do my best), so, if you are familiar with a pixel format family, please consider contributing to the guide and the python tool!

Before signing off I would like to thank my employer, Collabora, for sponsoring my work on the Pixel Format Guide as an R&D project.