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Are We At the Limit of Screen Resolution Improvements?
itwbennett writes "A pair of decisions by Motorola and Ubuntu to settle for 'good enough' when it comes to screen resolution for the Ubuntu Edge and the Moto X raises the question: Have we reached the limit of resolution improvements that people with average vision can actually notice?" Phone vs. laptop vs. big wall-mounted monitor seems an important distinction; the 10-foot view really is different.
It's a matter of PPI and typical viewing distance. Phones are often held about a foot from your face. Computer monitors are usually two or three feet away from your face. TVs are significantly further away. Greater distance = eye is more tolerant of lower PPI. That's why the iPhone 5 is ~326 PPI, a Macbook Pro with Retina is ~220 PPI, an Apple 27" Thunderbolt Display is ~110 PPI and a 65" 1080p TV is ~35 PPI.
You'll always need anti-aliasing. Even if we had 1000 dpi monitors.
Because 1/2 of the population is above average.
Half the population is above (or below) the median.
Wikipedia says:
Angular resolution: about 4 arcminutes, or approximately 0.07Â
Field of view (FOV): simultaneous visual perception in an area of about 160Â Ã-- 175Â.
So that's about 2200 x 2400 if the screen is at the correct distance. Further away and you need less resolution. Closer and you won't see the whole image.
Because 1/2 of the population is above average.
Basic stats fail.
Half the population is above the *median*, by definition.
Half the population is only above the average/mean for a given characteristic if that characteristic has a exactly symmetric distribution such as the normal distribution
Example:
IQs 89, 90, 91, 130
Average is 100, 3 below average and 1 above average.
Median is 90.5 (average of the two 'middle values'). 2 below median, 2 above.
can't seem to edit my previous post. antialiasing has nothing to do with resolution.
antialiasing and font edge smoothing as it is understood when people speak of antialiasing has pretty much everything to do with resolution.
if you can't see the individual pixels, and need say a group of 10x10 pixels to see a point on the screen, it becomes meaningless to do any subpixel effects of any kind on those 100 pixels that make up the smallest unit you can actually see.
and slashdot doesn't have an edit functionality btw.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Resolution. Is. Not. Font. Size.
Moore's law has allows us to double display densities nearly as fast as CPU and memory had been improving.
The addition of a simple lenticular or image mask can turn any LCD in to a glasses free display.
An additional increase in resolution will then turn this in to a multiview display.
A bit more resolution and a micro lens array can then create a light field display.
Beyond that is digital holography.
It's all fairly cut and dry, standards are already falling in place to accommodate and stream this level of video and even capture live video like this.
So any software developer that assumes we've hit the limit will looks as foolish as Bill Gates saying no one would ever need more then 640k of memory.
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/search?q=Lenticular
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/search/label/3D
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/search?q=Multiview
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/search/label/Digital%20Holography
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso