Metric display resolutions should be invented.

[Prysin]

Just now, Enderman said:

With the two potatoes that are about to become president, I wouldn't be so sure about that.

we'd all die in a fusion fireball long before your dream of the US adopting the metric system will happen

[SLAYR]

31 minutes ago, Enderman said:

This is just a thought, I know it won't change anything, stop killing all the fun.

Some day the US will switch from imperial to metric, there is hope.

America does what it wants, 1:12 inches to feet, 1:3 feet to yard, 1:1760 yards per mile. Counting by 10s was just too boring.

[Sauron]

34 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Nobody uses 720p displays these days

Apple does... and some other phone manufacturers do as well. But again, "clean" is a very vague concept. 1080 has at least one more prime factor than 1000, which mathematically makes it "cleaner" than most powers of 10. Secondly, this never really had anything to do with the imperial system... engineers design these things, and you can be sure they are all very happy of using a system that makes sense. I can assure you that much more thought went into it than just randomly generating a number close to 1000 and then choosing an aspect ratio that sort of felt right.

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Apple does... and some other phone manufacturers do as well. But again, "clean" is a very vague concept. 1080 has at least one more prime factor than 1000, which mathematically makes it "cleaner" than most powers of 10. Secondly, this never really had anything to do with the imperial system... engineers design these things, and you can be sure they are all very happy of using a system that makes sense. I can assure you that much more thought went into it than just randomly generating a number close to 1000 and then choosing an aspect ratio that sort of felt right.

Uh, no, it was based on the ancient technology of tv lines and wireless transmission.

[typographie]

The Fahrenheit scale does have some things going for it. One degree Fahrenheit is a smaller unit than one degree Celsius, so it can express finer measures using whole numbers. And since 32°F = 0°C, it can go lower before it needs to wrap around into negatives. These don't make it better of course (you still want the Kelvin or Celsius units for any mathematics I've ever learned), but those are at least "features" I can point to.

 

I absolutely can't defend our systems of measuring length, mass/weight, or volume. I agree the metric system has basically every advantage. Worse, we have a tendency to divide up our system using fractions instead of decimals. Sorry world, please don't hate us. <3

[Mira Yurizaki]

Keeping with base 10 is just as arbitrary as using any other system. Even metric, despite it's base 10 divisions, is completely arbitrary in which those units were derived. I mean, let's look at where some of these metric values came from.

 

Mass: The mass of the kilogram prototype (which is changing, so scientists are trying to find something else)

Distance: The distance light in a vacuum travels in 1/299792458 of a second (Light speed is a constant at least)

Time: "the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom " (this isn't really a constant, but it's stable enough, which means distance by definition is based on this)

Ampre: One columb per second. A columb is the charge of 6.241×10¹⁸ protons

Mole: The amount of atoms in exactly 12g of carbon-12

 

So arguing one system is arbitrary versus another makes no sense to me. While I agree metric is easier to convert, most of us don't really convert between scales anyway. I don't measure 0.0625 gal or 0.120L of rice. I measure either 1/2 cups or 120mL. I don't go "the post office is 13,200 feet/4000 meters that way", I'd go "the post office is 2.5 miles/4 kilometers that way".

 

But again, regarding resolutions, the reasons why the way they are are 1. historical 2. compromise 3. whatever's best for the system that's working it.

 

Here's some food for thought while we're at it, all quartz clocks run off a timer that's 32,768Hz. Why? Because this is exactly 2^15. All the computer in the clock has to do is wait for a counter to overflow before adding to the second. That's a lot easier than going "is the timer at 1000 ticks yet?" every time a cycle happens (now-a-days, timers may have an alarm, but that's more stuff to add on a simple device).

Edited October 26, 2016 by M.Yurizaki
Changed the mole definition, which was weird.

[PlayStation 2]

In a perfect world, that'd exist.

Too bad this world ain't fuckin' perfect, and that's why 1366x768 was adopted instead of 1360x765 or smth

 

honestly tho 1366x768 triggers the hell outta me and idk why

[porina]

4 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

honestly tho 1366x768 triggers the hell outta me and idk why

1366 isn't an integer multiple of 8, as I found out when my 1366x768 TV and video card at the time would only accept 1360 or 1368 pixels to go between them, so I never got 1:1 pixel mapping.

[PlayStation 2]

4 minutes ago, porina said:

1366 isn't an integer multiple of 8, as I found out when my 1366x768 TV and video card at the time would only accept 1360 or 1368 pixels to go between them, so I never got 1:1 pixel mapping.

My old TV was supposed to natively display at 1366x768, but I eventually realized that it can only go up to 1360x768.

[Glenwing]

Resolution standards are a huge mess of legacy compatibility. 1366×768 is the old standard of 1024×768 extended in width to a 16:9 ratio, or a close approximation anyway (exact would be 1365 and one third pixels, which is not possible of course). You say 1920×1080 was "made-up" like it was completely arbitrary, but it is actually quite sensible, it's just the previous standard resolution of 1920×1200 reduced in height from 16:10 to 16:9. 1920×1200 itself came from the previous standard resolution of 1600×1200 extended from 4:3 to 16:10. And that resolution seems to be fairly self-explanatory as the numbers are reasonably nice and even, like you wanted.

 

Now getting back to 1024×768, why is something like that the old standard in the first place instead of something sensible like 1000×750? Well... once upon a time it was like that... The system you are proposing now with nice resolution numbers is exactly what we already have, just using today's technology as a starting point instead of what we had back when things actually started.

 

Lets take some 16:10 resolutions for example. Some standard 16:10 resolutions are 1280×800, 1440×900, and 1680×1050. You might say, why 1680×1050 and not 1600×1000, of all the 16:10 resolutions to skip? The reason actually is that the next one up is 1920×1200, and 1680×1050 is halfway between 1440×900 and 1920×1200. But let's say we, being sensible and nice-number-loving people, were to go back in time and make 1600×1000 the standard instead. That would hold up for many years (maybe complemented by higher resolutions like 1920×1200 and 2560×1600, or perhaps since we are nice-number-loving people, we would standardize 2000×1250 and 2400×1500 instead), and eventually we would move on to making 3200×2000 screens which is exactly 4-to-1 pixels to allow for nice scaling. And then eventually you would make 6400×4000, and then 12800×8000, and then 25600×16000.... But hmm, this is starting to look familiar...

 

If we continue from those other resolutions, like 2000×1250, eventually you would double the numbers to 4K and 8K, 4000×2500 and 8000×5000, and then again to 16K, 16000×10000... Hmm, that is starting to look familiar. And 2400×1500 will become 4800×3000, and then 9600×6000, and then 19200×12000... Hmm... And you can see how the pattern will unfold.

 

If you continue doubling numbers for compatibility / good scaling, you will end up with binary multiples, not nice decimal numbers, even if you start with decimal numbers. If you start with reasonably "nice" triple digit numbers like we did back in the day (i.e. 800×600), you will end up with the "ugly" four-digit binary resolutions we have today. If you start today with "nice" four-digit resolutions, you will just end up with five-digit "binary" resolutions.

 

But like I said, most of the "weird" resolutions today are a result of extending a standard resolution of one ratio to newer ratio. And with older "binary" resolutions, we should consider that back in the day, computers were not consumer products, they were only used in labs and enterprises, and the technical details like resolution numbers were only dealt with by computer engineers, so there was no problem with using binary numbers instead of "nice" decimal numbers; binary numbers ARE nice numbers to computer science people  I'd love a 4096×2560 screen personally... 

 

Myself, I would prefer that 16:10 and 24:10 be the standards for computing and media, and maybe if I were to go back in time and write the standards, 5:4 would have been the standard (which in portrait would be 4:5, or 8:10, exactly half of a 16:10 or one third of a 24:10 resolution, allowing easy transitions from one era to the next without these weird resolutions). But, nothing we can do today

[Copuis]

i think you're confused in your rant

aspect ratios, are just ratios, the reason they are like that is years and years of film and photo, and print
they were the ratios that people found more comfortable or easier to consume

the resolution measurement it simply a count of pixels there isn't some system like you seem to think, it was often what the tech was limited to be on the display side, or broadcast side, (and once a format had been established they stuck to it for investment reasons)  

[Enderman]

51 minutes ago, Glenwing said:

Resolution standards are a huge mess of legacy compatibility.

And this is exactly why we should throw everything out the window and start with a fresh and logical method, either by multiples of 1000, or with a base 2 system which some people might argue is better (like 1024x2048 or something)

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

And this is exactly why we should throw everything out the window and start with a fresh and logical method, either by multiples of 1000, or with a base 2 system which some people might argue is better (like 1024x2048 or something)

We should throw out a lot of things and start anew (x86-64 would be so much better if it didn't have to support 16-bit code ), but the moment you try that, you're going to be faced with lots of angry people.

 

Also this:

[Copuis]

5 minutes ago, Enderman said:

And this is exactly why we should throw everything out the window and start with a fresh and logical method, either by multiples of 1000, or with a base 2 system which some people might argue is better (like 1024x2048 or something)

that wont work as 2:1 isn't ideal, and it's the greatest to work on (to consume is great) that "mess of legacy" comes from user feedback mostly (and 100's of year in terms of print ratios etc) 

you're looking at it like they has screwed this
not, "they looked at what was best for the user"

[vanished]

Do you have a source for your backstory of how we got to 16:9 and 1080p by averaging and pulling a number out of our asses?

 

Other than that I agree, I guess.  I mean, it would be better, but I don't feel strongly enough to really care to be honest.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Well another thing is what advantage does changing the screen resolution do? Just because it's say a multiple of 1000 or using base 2 doesn't mean much. 2048 is just as arbitrary and random to people as 1920. You could argue aspect ratios all you want, but there are plenty of arguments for what's better and what's not.

 

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

Do you have a source for your backstory of how we got to 16:9 and 1080p by averaging and pulling a number out of our asses?

Here's the story from Wikipedia:

Quote

Dr. Kerns H. Powers, a member of the SMPTE Working Group on High-Definition Electronic Production, first proposed the 16:9 (1.77:1) aspect ratio at a time when nobody was creating 16:9 videos. The popular choices in 1980 were: 1.33:1 (based on television standard's ratio at the time), 1.66:1 (the European "flat" ratio), 1.85:1 (the American "flat" ratio), 2.20:1 (the ratio of 70 mm films and Panavision) and 2.39:1 (the CinemaScope ratio for anamorphic widescreen films).

 

Powers cut out rectangles with equal areas, shaped to match each of the popular aspect ratios. When overlapped with their center points aligned, he found that all of those aspect ratio rectangles fit within an outer rectangle with an aspect ratio of 1.77:1 and all of them also covered a smaller common inner rectangle with the same aspect ratio 1.77:1.^[1] The value found by Powers is exactly the geometric mean of the extreme aspect ratios, 4:3 (1.33:1) and 2.35:1, √47/15 ≈ 1.770 which is coincidentally close to 16:9 (1.77:1). Applying the same geometric mean technique to 16:9 and 4:3 yields the 14:9 aspect ratio, which is likewise used as a compromise between these ratios.^[2]

 

[Scruffy90]

You my friend need one of those Eizo 1:1 monitors lol BTW even metric would be confusing. Look at the stupidity they did with the Surface pro resolution.

[Enderman]

6 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Well another thing is what advantage does changing the screen resolution do? Just because it's say a multiple of 1000 or using base 2 doesn't mean much. 2048 is just as arbitrary and random to people as 1920. You could argue aspect ratios all you want, but there are plenty of arguments for what's better and what's not.

Being a multiple of 1000 means you can easily use percentages to have things scale across all screens with minimal chance of blurring.

If you have an image and you set it to 13% on a 1000px screen you know that it exactly will be 130px, or on a 2000px screen it will be 260px.

Guess what happens when you try to do 13% of 1080p?

140.4

Oh wait, how do you display half a pixel?

Do you round down so that the image fits? Do you average so that the pixels are 40% one colour and 60% background colour? Do you round up? What if someone is viewing it on a 768p screen? then what?

 

 

I think you see the problem.

 

8 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Do you have a source for your backstory of how we got to 16:9 and 1080p by averaging and pulling a number out of our asses?

 

Other than that I agree, I guess.  I mean, it would be better, but I don't feel strongly enough to really care to be honest.

^^ that guy posted the text from wikipedia

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, Scruffy90 said:

You my friend need one of those Eizo 1:1 monitors lol BTW even metric would be confusing. Look at the stupidity they did with the Surface pro resolution.

1:1 would be more for people who program and read stuff and need vertical space, I would prefer widescreen 2:1.

That way If I need to I can divide the screen into two perfect squares

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Being a multiple of 1000 means you can easily use percentages to have things scale across all screens with minimal chance of blurring.

If you have an image and you set it to 13% on a 1000px screen you know that it exactly will be 130px, or on a 2000px screen it will be 260px.

Guess what happens when you try to do 13% of 1080p?

140.4

Oh wait, how do you display half a pixel?

Do you round down so that the image fits? Do you average so that the pixels are 40% one colour and 60% background colour? Do you round up? What if someone is viewing it on a 768p screen? then what?

Except what if you have a GUI element that's only 10 pixels wide? What's 13% of 10? 1.3. Whoops.

[AresKrieger]

5 hours ago, Enderman said:

A metric display system would improve everyone's experience with computers.

Do you know why metric uses base 10, or rather why our numerals are base 10, if not I'll given you a hint

 

Logically speaking either base 8 or base 12 (especially 12) are better systems due to ability to be divided by 4 and/or 3 

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Except what if you have a GUI element that's only 10 pixels wide? What's 13% of 10? 1.3. Whoops.

Why would you ever make a GUI element 1 pixel big.........

Nobody would ever see that.

GUI elements have either a set size or a minimum size.

[Enderman]

Just now, AresKrieger said:

Do you know why metric uses base 10, or rather why our numerals are base 10, if not I'll given you a hint

 

Logically speaking either base 8 or base 12 (especially 12) are better systems due to ability to be divided by 4 and/or 3 

Maybe we should do base 2 then, that would also be really good.

4096x2048, both very nice numbers to work with.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

Why would you ever make a GUI element 1 pixel big.........

Nobody would ever see that.

GUI elements have either a set size or a minimum size.

The point is that no matter what you use, you'll have division issues. If anything, we should be using multiples of 360 because it divides evenly with so many numbers (or what they call a highly composite number)

[AresKrieger]

4 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Maybe we should do base 2 then, that would also be really good.

4096x2048, both very nice numbers to work with.

Yep that is fine, my only point was that almost every human counting system/standard is arbitrary; in the case of monitors I think the best course of action would be basing it off average field of vision and picking a whole number ratio (no more than 2 digits) that fits closest to that average