"[Original research] How Pokemon GO determines the target ring color"

#PokemonGO: IntroductionAmidst all of the speculation regarding catch rates, there has also been some guesswork thrown about regarding the color of the target circle and its relationship to catch rate. The GamePress catch mechanics page (which will be updated once I or someone else gets around to it), for example, lists 4 ring colors and approximate capture rates for each color. The widely accepted assumption is that there are 4 colors - green, yellow, orange, red - with maybe some shades in between that vary with catch rate.Well, this is kind of correct. I, too, was expecting a small number of discrete colors that correlated to catch rate. But the data surprised me.MethodsOver the course of a week, when I encountered a wild Pokemon, I took screenshots as I was holding down a Poke Ball, a Great Ball, and an Ultra Ball, in order to save the color of the targeting circle. I then caught the Pokemon and took a screenshot of its stat page so that I can retrieve its level by looking at its CP arc. For some Pokemon, I also took screenshots before and after using a Razz Berry to see if there was any change, however slight, in the target circle color.My final data set contains 48 catches, on 4 of which I also did the Razz Berry comparison. I ended up throwing out the Great Ball data because we don't know the exact formula for the Great Ball catch rate.For each Poke Ball and Ultra Ball screenshot, I used this website to get the hexadecimal color code of the target ring.For those of you who don't know what a hexadecimal color code is, here's a brief explanation. Your computer displays pixels as a combination of 3 basic color values: red, green, and blue. The intensity of each color is expressed as a number between 0 and 255 in decimal (0x0 to 0xFF in hexadecimal). 0 means that color is completely absent, and 255 means that color is at full intensity.A hexadecimal color code is expressed in the format 0x######, where the first 2 ##s are red, the second 2 ##s are green, and the last 2 ##s are blue.DataPlot of ring color vs. catch rateExcel spreadsheet with dataHere's a quick summary of the data:There appears to be 511 discrete possible colors of the targeting ring: every value from 0xFF0000 to 0xFFFF00, and then every value from 0xFFFF00 to 0x00FF00.The relationship between color intensity and catch rate appears to be exactly linear. If we were to extrapolate, a catch rate of 0% would be "pure" red (0xFF0000), a catch rate of 100% would be "pure" green (0x00FF00), and a catch rate of 50% would be exactly yellow (0xFFFF00).Using a Razz Berry has absolutely zero effect on the target ring color.ConclusionSo it is likely that there are 511 discrete possible target ring colors which vary linearly according to catch rate. What this means is that it's impossible to say for sure, for example, that simply by eyeballing a color, you can determine the exact catch rate. It's basically impossible for a human to differentiate between 2 colors as close as 0xFF8000 and 0xFF8400.However, we can establish basic thresholds:This red color = 0% catch rate. (In reality a 0% catch rate is impossible.)This orange color = 25% catch rate.This yellow color = 50% catch rate.This yellow-green color = 75% catch rate.This green color = 100% catch rate.Although humans cannot distinguish between very similar colors, computer applications can! This introduces the very exciting possibility of an overlay app that can give the player a wild Pokemon's catch rate (without breaking ToS) to an accuracy of within 0.2%. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2bDjQz2