Will the concept of 'pixels' ever die?

[Participant]

Random thought here. Will pixels always be a 'thing' in terms of monitors? When will they stop mattering, or even existing? Will any future tech render them obsolete? Something maybe like infinite and infinitely adjustable pixels?

Or am I just talking dumb?

 

[gropingmantis]

.

 

[Mr crowley]

I thought about something like that the other day. Long story short, i made a wild prediction to myself that resolution and pixels would be replaced by a completely different model or standard. As we start to hit limits of different technologies and we come to a wall, to continue pushing forward there will need to be a big re-think.
Obviously I have no idea what the future holds, but we might find some other way of manipulating light in such a way that on future monitors there isn't a resolution at all, as there are no pixels used. I really don't know yet what could be adjusted in that sort of tech which could push display tech even further ahead.

Or maybe i'm getting way too far ahead of myself, and the real innovations to come are in things like the oculus rift.

 

[Tom B]

Eyes work by having cells that detect photons so essentially your eye has a resolution, whether you could consider what one cell picks up a "pixel" is debatable but essentially the same idea. You'll still need something that emits photons at a specific wavelength. Even if you scale it down, as light is made up of photons it's possible you could somehow scale it down to an atomic level and have individual photons released at specific wavelengths but these would be similar to pixels in that they'd be a single point that emitted a single colour at a time.

That said, bypass your eyes and put something directly into your brain and you might be onto something.

 

[Sasahara]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_monitor

 

[Zefan]

Eyes work by having cells that detect photons so essentially your eye has a resolution, whether you could consider what one cell picks up a "pixel" is debatable but essentially the same idea. You'll still need something that emits photons at a specific wavelength. Even if you scale it down, as light is made up of photons it's possible you could somehow scale it down to an atomic level and have individual photons released at specific wavelengths but these would be similar to pixels in that they'd be a single point that emitted a single colour at a time.

Isn't that almost exactly what CRTs do? It's why they have no fixed resolution so to speak.