Insights: Monitors and Eye Accuity

 As part of an ongoing series, I'm highlighting a series insights I discovered in

Information Visualization, Second Edition: Perception for Design

Given that the human eye has receptors packed into the fovea at roughly 180 per degree of visual angle, we can claim that in linear resolution, we are about a factor of four from having monitors that match the resolving power of the human retina in each direction. A 4000 x 4000-pixel resolution monitor should be adequate for any conceivable visual task, leaving aside, for the moment, the problem of superacuitites. (Page 62. Published in 2004)

For reference, Apple's 24" monitor is 1920 by 1200. How many years off are we, do you think?

UPDATE: I've found that you can read a mostly complete FREE sample of  Information Visualization on Amazon.com

 

Comments

[A.D.]

Resolution is not mere pixel count -- it's the pixel density that's important. When the book says 4000x4000 pixels, what is the area it's talking about? 1 square inch? 10 square inches?

[Keith Lang]

You're right A.D., I'll clarify:

Colin states that modern monitors have a resolution of about 35 pixels per centimetre (that's about 90 pixels per inch).
This translates to 40 cycles per degree at normal viewing distances. The human eye has receptors at a resolution of about 180 per degree of visual angle, which Colin says "is about a factor of four" greater than our current monitor resolutions.
So he's saying, for the current 'average' monitor size, to reach the resolution of the eye would require 4000x4000 pixels.

Of course, this doesn't take into aliasing, the nyquist effect or superacuitites. I've found the book is available online, to preview, for free if you'd like to read more - see my update in the post body. You can read more about superacuties in pg 65.

[Vincent Gable]

Here's some info on when we can expect to see displays like this. All my sources can be found in http://vgable.com/blog/2008/03/31/resolution-independence/" rel="nofollow">my post on resolution independence.

(Also, for what it's worth, Jackob Nielson gave 300 PPI as the point where experimentally people could read as quickly on a display as on paper. Thats lower then the roughly 400 PPI it should take to equal the eye's resolution. I haven't looked for more recent studies. There could well be new data.)

The bad news: "the resolution of computer displays has increased by less than a factor of two over the last twenty years. Sure, displays have gotten larger -- much larger -- but actual display resolution in terms of pixels per inch has only gone up by a factor of about 1.6."

But there's good news. Mobile phones and netbooks that you can buy today have high PPI displays that are a factor of two or three above today's monitors. The Sony Ericsson X1 phone has a 312 PPI display; the Fujitsu Lifebook U820 has a 270 PPI, 5.6" display.

I don't know what's involved with scaling up a 3" screen to a 30" screen. But I do know that once a technology is proven to be buildable, it gets scaled up/down shockingly fast. So if I'm understanding everything correctly, in 10 years, it seems reasonable that we'll have 400 PPI displays that "match the resolving power of the human retina". That's pretty cool!