As restrictions go, I'm OK with this. I looked into doing some Atari 800(XL/XE) coding and for most any graphics application, you're bottlenecked by what you can keep around in main RAM, plus the limits of what you can program ANTIC/GTIA to do per scanline. Programming the scanline interrupts, you can manage to do quite a lot, and similar tricks with VERA are likely(fingers crossed). A lot of the latter day demoscene work on Atari relies on aftermarket RAM upgrades to unleash more of the raw power of the graphics hardware.
Of course, the X16 already accounts for that with its banked 2Mb RAM. Large RAM effectively means that most software for the platform can be single load, streaming in whatever is needed 8k at a time instead of going to storage media. But even so, a full 640x480 256 color image is so large relative to the RAM size that it's likely to be relegated to splash screens and demo effects.
Of course, the X16 already accounts for that with its banked 2Mb RAM. Large RAM effectively means that most software for the platform can be single load, streaming in whatever is needed 8k at a time instead of going to storage media. But even so, a full 640x480 256 color image is so large relative to the RAM size that it's likely to be relegated to splash screens and demo effects.