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U of CA Constructs 220 Million Pixel Display
eldavojohn writes "Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have built a 220 million pixel display across 55 high-resolution tiled screens. Linked via optical fiber to Calit2's building at UC Irvine, the display can deliver real-time rendered graphics simultaneously across 420 million pixels to audiences in Irvine and San Diego."
That's all good, but are our eyes capable of viewing every single px of it?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Then we'll talk.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Its 50x 30" displays, its not about the display so much as the cluster of 18 computers/video cards working together. That sets each individual computer at rendering just under 3 displays each. An easy feat in and of itself. Now getting it to work syncronously with 17 other computers... thats neat.
People who are dismissing as just a wall of monitors are mistaken. It takes dozens of computers to run that resolution, which is no trivial task. This is not a theater system, so complaining about seams misses the point entirely. If they were just looking for a semi-large seamless screen, any shmuck could just use a single projector.
This system allows groups of researchers to review large amounts of visual data in both macro and micro scale. If you want to see the micro scale, you simply walk up to an individual monitor. Review can be done simultaneously among many people.
For a seamless, 100 million pixel projection screen (this is also not trivial, as removing seams requires real time brightness and color correction along edges) can be viewed here. In comparison, an IMAX theater uses a very large single projector unit weighing nearly 2 tons.
The sister screen at UCI can be viewed at here.
as a non american, U of CA is much more comprehensible than UCSD. But, wait, who really matters about non american readers?
Your eye transfers raw data to your brain similar to a bitmap/RAW file.
No. While the bulk of the signal processing is performed in what is theorized to be a 4-layer neural network, the retina is actually able to perform a substantial amount of processing on its own. For example, lateral inhibition between receptors highlights edges - at the edge of black and white, the data that is sent to the brain actually shows the black as more black and the white as more white. There are also thought to be motion detectors in the retina, color processing (our "red" and "green" cones are actually very, very close in their wavelength responses, and both even overlap with the "blue" response curve, so it requires some processing to actually separate the colors out), and far more that we still don't understand. The actual rods and cones make up a small part of the complicated network that is the retina.
Even though your eyes are able to see colour even in your peripheral vision, the brain doesn't think that the information of colour is as important as the outline/shape of the object.
No. You can't see color in your peripheral vision because the periphery of your retina is optimized for motion and brightness, ie it contains mostly rods instead of cones. There is also a higher convergence of individual receptors onto ganglia.
Talking about the eye as it related to a pixellated display is meaningless, because the eye does not see in, strictly, pixels, and the eye's receptors show significant spatial variation. Higher resolution will still translate into smoother curves, finer motions, and so on, and that will still have some effect on our subjective perception of the display.