4 ms·

i noticed a bunch if spirals demoed seem to kind of twinkle when you scroll the page. is this a known optical illusion?

by babkayaga 6y ago

philo23 6y ago
A Moiré pattern perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern
kroltan 6y ago
It's called "limitations of display devices"! The high contrast of the pictures, modern smooth scrolling, reveals the inherent ghosting (or overdrive) of most computer screens. While decent monitors are usually not noticeable in more regular use-cases, tightly-packed lines are very noticeable. That means that there is a partially-faded copy of the previous frame still visible for a fraction of a second, which your eye sees, and the resulting image has Moiré fringes because of the mismatching angles. For example, my monitor shows the purple drawings pretty sharply, but the green or white pictures are very artifacted when moving.
- kroltan 6y ago
  (me again) Which reminds me of this neat site to visualize these limitations: https://www.testufo.com/ghosting https://www.testufo.com/ghosting On the top-right there is a drop-down, try all the options in the "Tests" category! Note it has fast-moving imagery that might trigger epilepsy if you're particularly sensitive.
- jeremy_wiebe 6y ago
  Is it not due to the inexactness of mapping the image pixels to device pixels? (Similar to what happens when drawing text with antialiasing)?
  - kroltan 6y ago
    In principle it could be, but usually browsers snap element rectangles to the pixel, thus protecting against that (have you ever seen a blurry border on a box because its contents had 0.5px size? nope, even though it is annoyingly common in things such as game UIs) Plus you can see the same effect on the UFO tests, which strictly uses integer positions so pixel misalignment is not a factor.

4 ms·

i noticed a bunch if spirals demoed seem to kind of twinkle when you scroll the page. is this a known optical illusion?

by babkayaga 6y ago

i noticed a bunch if spirals demoed seem to kind of twinkle when you scroll the page. is this a known optical illusion?

philo23 6y ago
A Moiré pattern perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern
kroltan 6y ago
It's called "limitations of display devices"! The high contrast of the pictures, modern smooth scrolling, reveals the inherent ghosting (or overdrive) of most computer screens. While decent monitors are usually not noticeable in more regular use-cases, tightly-packed lines are very noticeable. That means that there is a partially-faded copy of the previous frame still visible for a fraction of a second, which your eye sees, and the resulting image has Moiré fringes because of the mismatching angles. For example, my monitor shows the purple drawings pretty sharply, but the green or white pictures are very artifacted when moving.
- kroltan 6y ago
  (me again) Which reminds me of this neat site to visualize these limitations: https://www.testufo.com/ghosting https://www.testufo.com/ghosting On the top-right there is a drop-down, try all the options in the "Tests" category! Note it has fast-moving imagery that might trigger epilepsy if you're particularly sensitive.
- jeremy_wiebe 6y ago
  Is it not due to the inexactness of mapping the image pixels to device pixels? (Similar to what happens when drawing text with antialiasing)?
  - kroltan 6y ago
    In principle it could be, but usually browsers snap element rectangles to the pixel, thus protecting against that (have you ever seen a blurry border on a box because its contents had 0.5px size? nope, even though it is annoyingly common in things such as game UIs) Plus you can see the same effect on the UFO tests, which strictly uses integer positions so pixel misalignment is not a factor.