Retina Display resolution myth debunked

[redirected from comp.mobile.ipad]

It turns out the claim by Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate
Technologies, that the Retina Display has significantly lower resolution
than the retina has ben proven incorrect:

<http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-
iphone-resolution/>

<http://tinyurl.com/2drbo4j>

 

The article is followed by dozens of pages of agreeing/disagreeing
arguments. Pointless.

Disguise a 3Gs and a 4 so that when turned off, no one can tell the
difference at any distance. Set them so that when turned back on, each
of them shows the same eye chart at the same actual size.

Randomly select two groups of fifty people. Hand each person one of the
models and ask them to read the smallest clear line on the chart.
Record which line you get and how close they chose to hold it.

This would be far more meaningful than that web page. And might
take less time than for a speed-typing record holder to re-type the
entire web page.

Alternate: For get the 3Gs. Create an image with the exact pixel
dimensions of the display. Make all pixels full white except for
randomly distributed, a single full black pixel, two adjacent
black pixels, and two black pixels with a white one between
them.

Ask a hundred people, at twelve inch distance, to point out
the ones that are single dots vs. double dots. See how many
correctly pick more than fifty percent of the adjacent dots
as two. Try it again with foreground/background. Again, this
would say far more than all the "logic" being poured out as text.

 

<

you might want to actually read what you cite, because that's not what
it says at all.

he is correct, it's just that most people don't have perfect vision, so
for them they won't be able to see the pixels, but for those who do
have excellent vision (and are pixel peepers), it might.

basically, it's a very good display and the claims are exaggerated a
bit, but not deceptively so.

 

Not excellent vision, but perfect vision.

 

<

nope. excellent vision is sufficient, and it's not as simple as people
make it seem either.

<http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/printer-ppi/>

Laser printers used to be 300 dots per inch (dpi), but evolved to 600
and even 1200 dpi. Why? People could see ragged edges on letters on
300 dpi laser printers. At 600 dpi edges appear smoother. Some can
tell the difference between 600 and 1200 dpi printers if the paper
quality is high. This attests to the power of the human eye. Of
course, this applies to high contrast subjects. But many images have
high contrast components too.

<http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/megapixel_myth/index.html>

I print 4 prints from the above page (two are both at the same PPI to
add some confusion), hand them to people in a blind test and ask them
to order the prints into increasing sharpness. Every person but one
has ordered the prints correctly in good light, and the sampling
included people up to age 75. That means most people could perceive
the 600 ppi print as sharper than the 300 ppi print and 100% could
tell 300 ppi prints as sharper than lower ppi prints.

key point: "That means most people could perceive the 600 ppi print as
sharper than the 300 ppi print..."

if the iphone 4 display (326 ppi) was beyond the limit of the human
eye, that would not be possible.

having a 300+ ppi display is fantastic and almost nobody is going to
pixel peep, however, the claims are stretched a bit.

 

Anyone who has problems with the new iPhone's display will also have
problems with a lot of the printed material on the planet since it's printed
at a slightly lower resolution than the iPhone can display.

Besides which, anyone testing the disply right now is no doubt looking at a
regular iPhone app that has had it's extra graphic pixels "guessed" at by
the iPhone or simply left out ... wait for some real iPhone 4 apps with
proper resolution graphics. (Text of course should already be smoother.)

 

nope. most printers are higher than 300 ppi.

bitmapped graphics will be the same but all text and native controls
will be at a higher resolution, as well as graphics created by api
calls (i.e., drawing ovals, paths, etc.).

 

Yes, but they have to print four colour dots within that space - even on a
mono laser printer they have to use dot combinations to produce shades of
gray. Images rarely need to be higher than 300dpi (150dpi is enough for a
desktop printer), even in the magazine industry ... as long as you're
printing them at 100% size of course. That's why digital cameras with
megapixel sizes of more than about 5 are fairly pointless, unless you plan
to enlarge your photos to poster or billboard sizes.

 

they're not pointless at all. for 300 ppi on an 8x10" print you need
just over 7 megapixels, and that's without any cropping at all. for an
11x14, it's almost 14 mp.

 

I'm not even going to start wasting time on this silly argument yet again.
Believe whatever you want to believe. :-\