Fixture manufacturers (at least the good ones) work on color
rendering accuracy and consistency like it's the cure for cancer.
Consoles sometimes spit out "best-guess" from a color wheel. The better consoles have color calibrated data for fixtures so that when you dial up R99, you get as close as possible out of a specific model of
fixture to what you'd get out of a
tungsten fixture with R99 in the
gel slot.
Carallon is one of these development/programming labs that provides a subscription service for manufacturers to incorporate into their consoles. My understanding of this process is that fixtures are provided to
Carallon, they do color analysis, and then provide a translation between a standardized color environment and what the
fixture can actually render.
Here's their brochure for that service, which companies like Pharos,
ETC, MA Lighting,
etc subscribe to.
In terms of the actual color science involved, there are a bunch of videos floating around about the different emitter configurations and how they render colors differently.
Effect of the Lime emitter
Selador Series Demystified: Closeup of the X7 Color System
Selador Desire: Complex Color Modes
Selador Series Demystified: Fire & Ice
Rob Gerlach x7 Talk
The general science summed up though is that you need color in your light sources in order to see color.
LED's tend to be a very narrow wavelength so you see true red, true green, and true blue, but all of the other colors in between are underrepresented in comparison. So with an
RGB emitter
array "white" looks very sickly. An RGBW or RGBA softens that
effect by giving you a somewhat cleaner and brighter white without really offering better individual colors in between. That's where you start to get into the more diverse emitter arrays that have indigo, deep blue, orange, lime, cyan,
etc.
