For years, television and tech companies have competed to offer higher and higher resolution screens.
First came HD, then 4K, and now 8K models promise twice the detail. But when does more resolution stop mattering?
A group of researchers from the University of Cambridge and Meta Reality Labs set out to answer that question.
They wanted to know how much detail the human eye can actually detect on a modern display.
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Their results, published in Nature Communications, suggest that our vision may already be reaching its limit with current screen technology.
Rethinking the eye test
To explore this, the researchers replaced the familiar Snellen chart, the one used by eye doctors for over 160 years, with a new kind of experiment.
Instead of testing eyesight with rows of letters, they built a moving digital screen.
This setup allowed them to study how well people could distinguish patterns at different resolutions and distances.
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They measured what’s called “pixels per degree,” or PPD. This number shows how many pixels fit into one degree of your field of vision.
It’s a more precise way of measuring image clarity than counting total pixels on a screen.
Volunteers were shown patterns in shades of gray and in various colors. They had to report when they could see the separate lines or colors of an image.
What the eyes really see
The findings revealed that people can often see more detail than traditional eye tests suggest.
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For grayscale images viewed straight ahead, the average limit was 94 PPD. For red and green images, it was slightly lower at 89 PPD. But for yellow and violet colors, the limit dropped to 53 PPD.
According to co-author Rafał Mantiuk, this happens because our brains process brightness and contrast better than color.
We might think we see in fine detail, but it’s the brain filling in much of the picture for us.
This discovery has real-world importance. Understanding our visual limits can guide the development of virtual and augmented reality, as well as help consumers make smarter choices when buying screens.
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The research team even created a free online calculator that lets you check the ideal resolution for your device and viewing distance.
“Our results set the north star for display development, with implications for future imaging, rendering and video coding technologies,” explained Dr Alex Chapiroto, co-author from Meta Reality Labs, to Eurekalert.
This article is based on information from Popular Science, and Eurekalert.
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