After some research in a seemingly continuous effort to understand what our fascination with resolutions are; I stumbled across a number of random facts that collectively paint a strange but interesting picture that I am going to try and paint here. Here goes...
First, let me start by saying... we have all been being deceived. Yup, every single one of us. Now to start properly... here is a nice picture.
That picture is in native 4k resolution. 3840 x 2160. Thats great right? Wrong.
That picture means fuck all in the real world. Because resolution almost never really works they way they have seemingly got us all to believe. you are seeing that image right now at whatever the native resolution of the display you are reading this on. If you are looking at it on a 1080p screen, you only think it looks really clear or clearer than usual because I have told you its a 4k image.
Now for some context. The average perfect human eye can resolve around 720PPI (pixels per inch) from a distance of around 4 inches. This means that anything higher than that from a distance of 4" or more, will literally be IMPOSSIBLE for the human eye to tell apart. PPI. Thats what I need you to remember here, thats what this entire discovery is based on.
Now think of a display as a blank canvas. And think of the spaces between each pixel in that display (aka the Dot Pitch) as troughs on that canvas. If you were to take a laser printer and paint across that canvas, say a red color. The resultant color, or rather intensity of that color will be determined by just how many troughs are present within each square inch of canvas. The more the troughs (that prevents color from holding) the less the intensity of the color seen by our eyes.
If you can understand whats above this, then I can move on. Now what that tells us, is that an image of whatever native resolution is inherently defined by the display its being displayed on. Seems pretty obvious so far. But think of it some more and then it gets interesting.
Remember the 4" 720PPI max eye resolve thingy I mentioned earlier? Well lets look at displays now. All of the below are screen diagonal sizes with a 4k rez.
- 6" = 734PPI
- 22" = 200PPI
- 55" = 80PPI
- 77" = 57PPI
- 100" = 44PPI
What you are looking at above is the literal scientific answer as to why your distance from a screen needs to increase as the screen size increases if you wish to retain a certain perceived resolution. So say you sit 10ft away from a 55" tv and replace that tv with a 75" one but still sit 10ft away; the image on the 75" will actually seem softer to you than what you were seeing on the 55" tv.
Again, think of a display as a canvas. What we all should be looking at isn't resolutions. Like, we simply shouldn't ever care about that or know that as long as the native resolution of the content is high enough. Be it 1080p/4k/8k. Whatever..... what we should focus on is the display PPI. An infinity resolution (made up name) will have a PPI of 720 regardless of the screen size. This will mean that at all display sizes, the only real limiter as to how good an image you see regardless of your distance from the display would be the quality of the source image.
The equivalent of a blank canvas with non distinguishable troughs, meaning the only thing that matters now is the quality of the paint.
To conclude, they have had us thinking that resolution is all that matters, when in truth that only matters with regards to the source material. What really matters with display tech is the PPI.
Hope you guys enjoyed that and happy belated new year everyone.
Discuss?
