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Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math

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Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math

#21

Post by potatolicious »

robomartin wrote: post #11

The landscape is getting a little messy for app developers. Not saying this is bad. It's just a fact. Today you have to deliver .png, @2X.png and *~ipad.png image sets with your app. And, there is no off-the-shelf way to reuse @2X images with the iPad when in most cases they'll work just fine. You can, but it requires creative coding. Still, this results in app packages that are bloated with image assets in triplicat…

Ugh, yeah, this is now a righteous mess. I don't see why a user's device has to be stuffed with payload that he/she has zero chance of ever utilizing.

All it does is bloat up the package and limit what devs can do and still remain in the downloadable-over-3G limit.

Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math

#22

Post by seanalltogether »

"Retina Display" should have a very clear definition. It should refer to resolution at which anti-aliasing becomes unnecessary. Anti-aliasing is rightly classified as a hack placed on top of modern drawing systems, and one of the reasons that many games don't support it out of the box. With a high enough resolution, anti-aliasing technology will become irrelevant.

This is going to be different for each resolution depending on the distance that you view it at, I built a quick image that you can test this on. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1437645/alias.html Put that on your phone or desktop and see how far you have to step back before the aliasing affect disappears

Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math

#23

Post by coob »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #14
robomartin wrote: post #11

The landscape is getting a little messy for app developers. Not saying this is bad. It's just a fact. Today you have to deliver .png, @2X.png and *~ipad.png image sets with your app. And, there is no off-the-shelf way to reuse @2X images with the iPad when in most cases they'll work just fine. You can, but it requires creative coding. Still, this results in app packages that are bloated with image assets in triplicat…

Maybe it marks a new rise in using vector image formats? (note: I am not an iOS developer and do not know the level of support iOS provides natively for vector formats)

You can render PDFs as UIImages[1], there are categories around that make this easy[2].

However, this is never ever going to be as cheap as loading a converted PNG (which Apple's modified pngcrush converts for you). I think a lot of devs have the draw/vector vs. precomposed bitmap tradeoff the wrong way round.

Drawing all of your gradated UIButtons with CoreGraphics methods is a false economy compared to just loading a stretchable PNG. Almost all of Apple's UI system imagery is bitmap based, and for a good reason.

[1] http://mattgemmell.com/2012/02/10/using-pdf-images-in-ios-ap...

[2]https://github.com/mindbrix/UIImage-PDF

Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math

#24

Post by crgt »

Is anyone else wondering about speed/performance issues when scaling up iPad graphics like this? Apple must have a hot new (A6?) chip up its sleeve that will enable performance on par with what you get from an iPad 2 now while also smoothly handling the larger images necessary for an iPad retina display. If not, what's the point outside of HD movies? Who cares about retina display if graphically intensive apps all chug? Or if devs have to use non high res images in order to preserve performance... Will be interesting to see how it shakes out.

Here's hoping for an awesome chip that will make all of the graphics production rework worth it..

Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math

#25

Post by a-priori »

swalsh wrote: post #17
a-priori wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the holographic system uses voxels, it would need to be capable of displaying 108,900 (330x330) voxels per cubic inch to allow the same level of resolution as an iPhone 4 if it produces a flat surface. This would allow Retina-quality images when viewed from at least 11 inches away. Assuming also that one voxel is 32 bits and not compressed, then the hologram would be 435,600 bytes per frame per cubic inch. A…

Fortunately, i'd be willing to bet you could use some kind of Occlusion culling to compress that stream quite a bit.

Yup, there's surely a ton of ways to compress that. Occlusion culling would be one, since you'd never see the insides of objects. For another, modulo atmospheric effects like fog and smoke, there'd be a lot of empty space between objects that even run-length encoding could compact quite a bit. I'm sure that even with lossless compression you could get it down to the petabyte range.

Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math

#26

Post by Drbble »

robomartin wrote: post #11

The landscape is getting a little messy for app developers. Not saying this is bad. It's just a fact. Today you have to deliver .png, @2X.png and *~ipad.png image sets with your app. And, there is no off-the-shelf way to reuse @2X images with the iPad when in most cases they'll work just fine. You can, but it requires creative coding. Still, this results in app packages that are bloated with image assets in triplicat…

Why doesn't App Store strip the app for each platforms? The DRM already blocks sideloading, so there is no concern about copying and app from Pad to Phone.

Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math

#27

Post by Drbble »

crgt wrote: post #24

Is anyone else wondering about speed/performance issues when scaling up iPad graphics like this? Apple must have a hot new (A6?) chip up its sleeve that will enable performance on par with what you get from an iPad 2 now while also smoothly handling the larger images necessary for an iPad retina display. If not, what's the point outside of HD movies? Who cares about retina display if graphically intensive apps all ch…

Well static images need hi res more than dynamic video, so animations could run at lower resolution and get blurred up with no user experience degradation.

Re: Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math

#28

Post by [deleted] »

robomartin wrote: post #11

The landscape is getting a little messy for app developers. Not saying this is bad. It's just a fact. Today you have to deliver .png, @2X.png and *~ipad.png image sets with your app. And, there is no off-the-shelf way to reuse @2X images with the iPad when in most cases they'll work just fine. You can, but it requires creative coding. Still, this results in app packages that are bloated with image assets in triplicat…

[deleted]
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