Wondering because I was watching a youtube video and noticed that at a low resolution, you just can’t display an equilateral triangle nicely
In: Technology
It sounds like what you’re talking about is aliasing. It’s basically what happens when you don’t have a high enough resolution to properly display an edge, and so you can see noticeably jagged steps instead of a clean line.
The thing is, changing the shape of the pixel wouldn’t fix that. It might change which edges have problems, but it’s not a substitute for having more pixels.
Square pixels have problems with lines at 45°. Rotate the pixels 45° and they’ll make smoother 45° lines, but then horizontal and vertical lines will look bad. Use hexagons and you won’t have any straight lines. Use circles and you’ve got the same problem, but worse since circled don’t fill in space perfectly. It’s not an issue of squares vs other shapes. You’ll have have some problem with any shape you choose.
There are techniques to blend pixels specifically to address this, they’re called anti-aliasing, but they’re not perfect either and usually have their own drawbacks. The only realistic solution is just to increase the pixel density until your eye isn’t able to distinguish individual ones anymore.
Latest Answers