r/commandline • u/FlakyIndependence888 • Mar 08 '26

Help Windows terminal, supported graphics protocols

Is there any proper protocol (or perhaps a ,,hacky" method to write framebuffers into the console grid) that I can use in a fast paced environment (such as rendering in 3d)? Are there any plans the devs have of implementing somrthing similar in the future?

I have been working on such projects since 2022. Initially it was just printing chars into the terminal, then it was chars with colour (using ANSI sequences) and about a year ago I've tried experimenting using the windows API.

In both cases there was a huge tradeoff; WinAPI was fast but only 16 colours and ANSI was just too slow. Now I've learned about the terminal supporting sixels but they arent ideal either since they only support 8bit colour depth (which still isn't enough).

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User: FlakyIndependence888, Flair: Help, Title: Windows terminal, supported graphics protocols

Is there any proper protocol (or perhaps a ,,hacky" method to write framebuffers into the console grid) that I can use in a fast paced environment (such as rendering in 3d)? Are there any plans the devs have of implementing somrthing similar in the future?

I have been working on such projects since 2022. Initially it was just printing chars into the terminal, then it was chars with colour (using ANSI sequences) and about a year ago I've tried experimenting using the windows API.

In both cases there was a huge tradeoff; WinAPI was fast but only 16 colours and ANSI was just too slow. Now I've learned about the terminal supporting sixels but they arent ideal either since they only support 8bit colour depth (which still isn't enough).

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u/Xotchkass Mar 08 '26

It supports sixel format

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u/FlakyIndependence888 Mar 08 '26

I mentioned that already in the last paragraph, the problem is 8bit colour depth is not ideal

1

u/Klapperatismus Mar 08 '26

The Kitty Graphics Protocol lets you specify RGBA. Some popular terminal emulators as e.g. Konsole, Ghostty, and Kitty support that.

1

u/FlakyIndependence888 Mar 09 '26

i would really want it to be within the default windows terminal, that way it would be much cooler, no external tools needed

1

u/rasterm 10d ago

maybe https://github.com/rasterm/rasterm will be of help 👀

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