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From: ferwerda@batcomputer.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: effective resolution and anti-aliasing
Message-ID: <1407@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: Tue, 16-Jun-87 10:07:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: batcompu.1407
Posted: Tue Jun 16 10:07:13 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Jun-87 04:02:42 EDT
References: <1713@ames.UUCP>
Reply-To: jaf@squid.tn.cornell.edu (James Ferwerda)
Organization: Program of Computer Graphics , Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 41
Keywords: resolution, anti-aliasing

In article <1713@ames.UUCP> lamaster@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Hugh LaMaster) writes:
>I have heard that it is possible to represent lines of less than 1 pixel in
>width with greyscale or color images using data filtered from a higher
>resolution image or object.  I have never seen either the algorithms or the
>theoretical basis for an algorithm.  [An example would be a representation,
>using a greyscale picture, of a line less than one pixel or dot width in size].
>I have looked in standard graphics textbooks and find no mention of this [but
>I could have missed something or not understood what I was looking at].  Does
>anyone know of any references for this?  Are there any devices out there which
>make use of it [e.g. a monitor with a much higher resolution frame buffer than
>the tube and a filter to reduce the resolution before output to the tube]?
>
>
I'm glad you asked.

Two classic papers on this topic are 

Crow, F.C. The Use of Grayscale for Improved Raster Display of Vectors and
Characters. Proc. SIGGRAPH 1978, 1-5.

and

Kajiya, J. and Ullner, M. Filtering High Quality Text for Display on
Raster Scan Devices. Proc. SIGGRAPH 1981, 7-15.

there's also a paper by

Leler, W.J. Human Vision Anti-Aliasing and the Cheap 4000 Line Display.
Proc. SIGGRAPH 1980, 303-318.

for an exhaustive review of this whole topic, with more theory than
you'd ever want, and with real empirical tests of its usefulness in
static and dynamic raster displays, you can also read my thesis

A Psychophysical Approach to the Aliasing Problem in Realistic Image
Synthesis. Cornell University, 1987. by (me) James A. Ferwerda

Happy Reading.

Jim Ferwerda
jaf@squid.tn.cornell.edu{.UUCP}