350ppi OLED displays coming

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by grumbles

The standard resolution on a laser printer (without any enhancement) is 300 dpi. Those with exceptional eyesight might be able to pick out individual pixels at this resolution but the rest of us will not. I would love to have a reader with a 300 dpi screen. The closest I can get is with a Sony 350 which is about 200 dpi.

You can never be too rich, too skinny or have too high a resolution.

I will give you points one and three.

[rkomar]

One thing I've noticed on my PocketBook E-Ink device (~150 ppi), the thin fonts used in most PDF files end up looking dim and gray after anti-aliasing is applied. That's because the strokes used to render the characters are only one or two pixels wide at that resolution. Going up to 300 ppi or more would result in more solid black pixels appearing inside the characters, and thus, better contrast for reading. So, even if you can't see a single pixel clearly, a higher dot pitch would result in higher-contrast rendering of thin fonts when using anti-aliasing. I'm sure it's the same reason printers went well above 300 ppi, as well.

[John F]

Originally Posted by grumbles

The standard resolution on a laser printer (without any enhancement) is 300 dpi. ...

Sorry for sidetracking the thread, but...

Are you sure about this? That sounds a little low? I'm surprised that inkjet dpi is higher than laser?

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by John F

Sorry for sidetracking the thread, but...

Are you sure about this? That sounds a little low? I'm surprised that inkjet dpi is higher than laser?

It's not. The original lasers (HP LaserJet I, Apple LaserWriter) were 300 dpi. Even the cheapest current lasers will do 600 or more.

[kennyc]

I'm able to read just fine on all my devices. who needs more pixels. Meh!

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I'm able to read just fine on all my devices. who needs more pixels. Meh!

I do! For scientific papers and technical books, anyway. Try reading this paper I wrote many moons ago.

[Kumabjorn]

Soo, we need more pixels when reading under water?

[rkomar]

Definitely, if you're trying to read by Cerenkov light (that blue glow you see around underwater reactor fuel).

The point is, the current 6 inch E-ink devices are not suitable for reading papers like that.

[Kumabjorn]

Ahh, you wanted us to download the paper to our eReaders and read it on that.
I don't read PDFs on my Kindle, because they are usually not created to be read on a device like that. However, if your original formating for the paper is done with a 6" screen in mind, I think you can make it legible even with all the formulas.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Ahh, you wanted us to download the paper to our eReaders and read it on that.
I don't read PDFs on my Kindle, because they are usually not created to be read on a device like that. However, if your original formating for the paper is done with a 6" screen in mind, I think you can make it legible even with all the formulas.

True, but scientific papers are pretty well never formatted for 6" screens. I can do that with my own (and use a more E-Ink friendly font, as well), but I'm stuck with whatever PDFs everyone else provides for their papers. The figures are also problematic, even when the document is re-formatted.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that higher resolution displays had real benefits, even for those of us without SeaKing's eagle-eyes. You would be able to read those PDFs, for starters.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by rkomar

I do! For scientific papers and technical books, anyway. Try reading this paper I wrote many moons ago.

Works just fine on mine .

But stuff like that needs a bigger screen. Not neccessarily more pixels. A 350 dpi 6" screen wouldn't handle this any better than the current 167 dpi crop does, but my 150 dpi 9,7" does fine with it.

No 6" screen is ever going to handle A4/Letter sized PDFs well, whatever the resolution, unless you have superhuman eyesight. The screen just isn't physically large enough for it.

The best current smartphone screens are already at 300+ dpi. You'd still go blind trying to read that PDF of yours on them.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by miguel1626

Technically it is not indistinguishable, but others have argued that for all practical purposes most eyes cannot resolve individual pixels:

"If you have bad eyesight you won't tell the difference" isn't a very convincing argument.

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, I'm (very) shortsighted, which means that I can see things very close to my eyes extremely well - much better than people with normal vision.

I don't think that that would matter. The problem would be one of receptor density:
Thus, both data sets indicate that myopic eyes have lower retinal resolution acuity than emmetropic eyes.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

Works just fine on mine .

But stuff like that needs a bigger screen. Not neccessarily more pixels. A 350 dpi 6" screen wouldn't handle this any better than the current 167 dpi crop does, but my 150 dpi 9,7" does fine with it.

No 6" screen is ever going to handle A4/Letter sized PDFs well, whatever the resolution, unless you have superhuman eyesight. The screen just isn't physically large enough for it.

The best current smartphone screens are already at 300+ dpi. You'd still go blind trying to read that PDF of yours on them.

I have a 9.7" device (PocketBook 902), which is slightly better than the T1 in terms of resolution, but it doesn't have a Pearl screen. I have difficulty reading PDFs on it because of the anti-aliasing of the thin fonts. I've attached an image of what the text looks like from a typical scientific paper viewed in landscape mode. As you can see, very little of the text is black, because the thin strokes don't fill enough of the pixels. So, the text ends up having low contrast. With a higher dot pitch, you'd see more filled in (black) pixels for characters of the same physical size, and they would be easier to read.

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by rkomar

True, but scientific papers are pretty well never formatted for 6" screens. I can do that with my own (and use a more E-Ink friendly font, as well), but I'm stuck with whatever PDFs everyone else provides for their papers. The figures are also problematic, even when the document is re-formatted.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that higher resolution displays had real benefits, even for those of us without SeaKing's eagle-eyes. You would be able to read those PDFs, for starters.

OK. I looked at some of those scientific papers, and heard some explanations, and though some stuff wasn't very plain, I "saw" a few things that I could give a clearer explanations for. I won't go into aliasing, and stuff like that.

Above here and in a previous thread I talked about eyes, and the practical way vision is measured, and what it means. I could talk about sound too but that is another thread.

20/20 is "normal." Some people are better than that. Most everyone without a defect has 20/20 distance vision and good near vision, or better when they are very young. It is something that worsens for one reason or another as we get older.

There are of course legends about peoples eyes. For example one of my favorites was when Ted Williams once indicated that a base or a base line in an old stadium was wrong. They argued but finally went went out and surveyed it and it was a fraction of an inch off.

If a person is near sighted, they wear glasses that actually make the images clearer but also smaller, and if they are far sighted they wear glasses that make the images clearer and also bigger. You can see what that would do if you were trying to see small objects. The nearsighted person (myopic) with glasses would have a harder time than the farsighted person because their image is smaller than the image for the farsighted person with glasses. Without glasses of course the myopic person will see fine up close, the farsighted person will see fine at a distance. There are other cases too, I will not cover, but the above hits on the major types and points.

Now all the above is for normal distances. Usually we measure distance vision at 20 feet. That distance is sufficient to get a good idea. Near sighted vision measurement seems to vary from about 8 inches to 14. It is the near vision I want to discuss here.

There is a law called "the inverse square law." Essentially this means that if you take an object and move it closer to you by say 1/2 as close then its size as you see it becomes 4 times larger. If you move it away, say 2 times as far, its size as you see it becomes 1/4 as large. This works for images, sounds and for radio signals.

I will give an example.
You are 35, and have good near vision you think. You look at a gnat 12 inches away. There it is, you see it very nicely! What kind of details can you see? Well it is a gnat, darn you, what do you want to see? If you get about 10 inches away, you can see a leg maybe, but it is fuzzier if you try to get closer.
Your little girl who is 3 is there. You ask her what she can see. She moves so her eye is about 5 inches away. 1/2 the distance you used. To her the gnat is 4 times larger than it was to you at 10 inches. She might be able to see the gnats eyeball (if it has one.)

If you go to the playground, you will see the little children bending over looking at something on the ground. Usually a bug. They will just bend over and their eye might be 4 inches from the ground. They see that bug very well. We would have to get a magnifying glass and get on our knees to come close to seeing what they see. (That explains why they are so interested in those small things.)

Anyway, the point is, if you get closer to the screen, and can still focus without glasses the image will be larger, the pixels will stand out better.

If you wear farsighted glasses the image will get larger. If you are wearing myopic glasses, the image will be smaller even if you are at the same distance that the person with the farsighted glasses is.

The stronger the myopic glasses are, the less chance that the person wearing them will be 20/20 at a distance. It will depend more on the density of cones/rods on the retina. That one reason why the Highway Dept only requires about 20/30 or 20/40 distance vision. Besides being sufficient, it is a requirement that most people can make with corrective lenses.

It might surprise you that if you can't get the 20/30 or 20/40, you may still be able to drive, but you will have to take a individual test where the ability to use your eyes to see on the road is tested as well as your ability to handle the car.

Anyway, I think that the idea of a "retina" screen is for a normal eye at a certain (standard) distance. Does anyone know what that distance is?

(I have edited the above, tweaking it to read better and make sense.)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by SeaKing

There is a law called "the inverse square law." Essentially this means that if you take an object and move it closer to you by say 1/2 as close then its size as you see it becomes 4 times larger. If you move it away, say 2 times as far, its size as you see it becomes 1/4 as large. This works for images, sounds and for radio signals.

Well, sort of. The AREA varies with an inverse square law, but the SIZE (the linear dimensions) are an inverse linear relationship. If you view a page at half the distance, the letters will appear to be double the size, not 4x the size.