The logic is simple, more pixels on the screen allow us to create higher quality and more detailed images, but little by little we are approaching the limits of human vision, which means that new screen technologies are beginning to be designed for more specific purposes.
What are Vertical Micro-LEDs?
Pixels in today’s displays are made up of 3 sub-pixels, which are very, very small LED lights, each of which projects one of the three basic colors of red, green, and yellow-blue. Which in combination form the chrominance of each color and this in totality when combined with the luminance. We’re not going to get into the differences that exist between the different types of panels, but they’re mostly all based around this concept.
Well, MIT has developed Vertical Micro-LEDs, the concept of which is based on the fact that each of the sub-pixels are not side by side horizontally, but stacked vertically, so the area per pixel decreases a third. The results? Well, let the pixel per inch density become 9 times higher and, therefore, can reach 5000 pixels per inch.
Something that at first glance and given that many screens already exceed the 300 dots per inch limit, it’s pointless. What good is it to us that the pixels are so small if our limited vision will not be able to see them due to their size? Well, they have a certain application at the moment, although it’s more of a niche one, because it never got off the ground.
Technology is very green right now
Despite the fact that Jeehwan Kim and Jiho Shin, the two inventors of vertical Micro-LEDs, managed to create the minimum unit for each pixel and it is able to represent the entire color gamut, they still have a long way to go. to go, from the moment they have not yet developed the active matrix in which all the pixels will be placed to have a complete screen and form a complete image.
Vertical micro-LEDs in virtual reality?
However, there is one type of device that could greatly benefit from this technology and that is Virtual Reality, where due to the proximity of the screen to the player’s eyes, the maximum level of clarity has not been achieved. hit. Visual quality is measured in pixels per degree of view or PPD.
The ideal figure? The 60 PPD, a figure that is still a long way off even for the most advanced virtual reality headsets, but if it were to become standardized, it would cause even the most powerful graphics card to fail. If we take into account the fact that VR does not manage to take off in front of the general public, we see that due to a lack of power, vertical MicroLEDs are not viable in the short or medium term. Although not the worst, there is no video interface to achieve the necessary refresh rates and we do not know at the moment if the vertical Micro-LEDs support them.
The key to 8K monitors?
When we use a PC because the distance between our eyes and the screen is shorter than when we use a TV, we tend to use much smaller screens. The consequences of this? 4K resolution is completely new to many computers and 8K is not expected. The reason? We’ve talked about it before, the pixel density is too high for the human eye to notice the difference from resolution to resolution.
It’s not that we don’t see this technology for 8K monitors, but rather that we don’t believe these are being used massively by the general public, especially for gaming, think we’re talking about moving 4 times as many pixels as 4K and that’s an equal degree increase in memory, bandwidth, and computing power.
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