wine users - May 2011 - Switching to 16-bit colour depth (from 24) - is it possible?

Hello. I'm having a bit of trouble running some old games, like Planescape
Torment
(http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=22660&iTestingId=61130)
(the GOG.com version). When I try to start the game, it complains about the
desktop bit depth (I have 24 as default, and it requires 16-bit).

The game suggests I should either run it in fullscreen (which I am), or to
switch to 16-bit colour depth (which is quite an inconvenience if I have to edit
xorg.conf and restart X every time I want to play the game, and then edit
xorg.conf back, and restart X again)

Is it possible to use (or emulate?) 16-bit colours inside, e.g. a WINE virtual
desktop? Or to use some opengl extension which would provide this effect?


Thanks in advance :)

Answer is kinda No.  Some applications fall for Virtual desktop window option
and work.  But if they don't fall for it you are kinda stuffed.

X11 has its limitations.  I have not looks at xepher  or other sub X11 servers.

Basically wine does not emulate what the screen is.

@vitamin:

> And what xinit does? It starts another X server.

OK, I messed up a bit - I know that it starts a separate X session, what I meant
to say is, that by using xinit, we can easily start another session, without
messing anything in Xorg.conf, then use that session, or switch back or
whatever. So, yes we have to start separate X session , but we can do that with
one simple command ;]

> What all are you running in 16-bit mode that uses GPU acceleration?

Mostly OpenGL games (native Linux ports, and through wine) but especially 2D
games throught wine, with "DirectDrawRenderer" set to opengl, older
strategises tends to get pretty huge boost in performance that way. Never had
any problems with 3D acceleration in 16 bit depth.

GF9800GT, newest drivers from Nvidia site+Debian Stable/Testing

and

GF9100M, newest drivers from Nvidia site+Debian Stable/Testing

I use 16bit depth much more often on the latter of course, because it is too
slow to run most games in 24 bit depth.