3 ms·
The quality of sub-pixel AA depends A LOT on the physical parameters of the display. It's basically the OS saying "I know that pixels aren't actually square, an
by garmaine 8y ago
The quality of sub-pixel AA depends A LOT on the physical parameters of the display. It's basically the OS saying "I know that pixels aren't actually square, and I'll use that knowledge to better digitize the font's curves." That worked fine when everything was CRTs or the same technology of LCD displays. However the faults of sup-pixel AA show through pretty strongly on the variety of modern displays (OLED vs AMOLED vs. ...), and the rotation capability of tablet displays. Apple is in the process of switching LED technologies across their products.
That said, if there's anyone in the position to exploit their knowledge of the ACTUAL physical display and its sub-pixel layout, it's Apple. I'd expect Windows or Android to drop sub-pixel AA... but iOS/macOS? I'm mystified.
- iforgotpassword 8y agoI think Windows has a feature to configure the subpixel arrangement, what about MacOS? Sure they know about the internal screen, but not the one you plug in.
- ygra 8y agoDon't screens tell the OS about their physical characteristics? At least the native resolution and the physical screen size (or dpi) are available to the OS somehow. I'd guess the sub-pixel arrangement might also be.
- iforgotpassword 8y agoThat's EDID you're talking about and AFAIK, it doesn't support that. On my android now but if anyone wants to fiddle around with what their screen provides, on Linux there is read-edid and parse-edid to query and interpret the raw data directly. It's not terribly much since it's 256 bytes max iirc.
- pasquinelli 8y agoi thought that subpixel aa smoothed by using the individual channels (r, g, b) of a pixel, not by taking into account the physical shape of a pixel.
- tzahola 8y agoYes. But how do you know if it’s RGB or BGR or GBR etc? Sometimes there’s a fourth subpixel for white too. On Windows there used to be a wizard where you had to choose which one looks better to let the system figure out your display’s subpixel arrangement.
- garmaine 8y agoLook at your screen with a magnifying glass. Then look at your phone's screen. And your TV screen.
- garmaine 8y agoI think we are saying the same thing. A pixel is actually three separate fixed color lights. By shape I meant their layout/arrangement and size.
- blt 8y agoSubpixel AA was never about CRTs; they do not have a consistent mapping between logical pixels and physical rgb holes in the shadow mask. It was always about LCDs
- garmaine 8y agoHaving actually been in the graphics industry before LCDs were prevalent, we did sub-pixel rendering. It just wasn't built in as a standard feature in OS font rendering until LCDs made it necessary.