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Dumb Thoughts........Analog or Digital? More advanced? (1 Viewer)

Howie A

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I was thinking the other day that in a world where
everything is going to digital, in what case would
analog be considered more of an advancement in technology?

And then it hit me.

I could only think of a few but here is one that I could not live without...
Analog Controllers. (i.e. Dual Shock II)

That was not too tough right? For this forum anyway..
 

EdR

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Analog sticks can be implemented digitally if you sample at short enough intervals...in fact, this may be how they function currently, I dont' know.

AFAIK, any analog signal can be approximated in digital form if the sampling rate is high enough.

I'm no expert, but thats how I understand it.
 

NickSo

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Well, with SACDs and DVD-A, they're all trying to make a digital format sound ANALOG as possible...

But in most cases, a perfect analog thing is usually better than the same thing in digital.

Say a picture. If you got a super nice non-digital camera and took a picture, then got a digital camera and took a picture, the analog would have 'unlimited' resolution, whereas the digital one has its max resolution depending on its Megapixel rating..

Iunno, thats what i think, it might be wrong :p)
 

Morgan Jolley

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Analog is better for things like film and audio, but for videogames, it's only good for controllers.

And since this is a section of the forum about videogames, I'd have to agree. Making things more and more analog (like every button on the PS2 controller besides Start/Select) is a good thing. The thing is, not every game will support the analog buttons. Some games look at the buttons as being pushed down or not, while others look at how far they're pushed down.

Either way, we're headed in a good direction in terms of analog implementation in videogames.
 

AlbertA

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Well, an analog camera doesn't have 'unlimited' resolution. I think the limiting factor is the film. There will be a point in which ccd arrays will be as small as the cones in the eye, and then we won't be able to tell the difference between film and ccds.

As far as controllers, I don't know why they call them analog. Sure, they are analog signals at a early stage, but subsequently they have to sample the signals at some resolution. A button for example, can be sampled at 8-bits of resolution and you would have 256 different pressure readings, more than I can handle I would think.
 

Alex Spindler

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Human interfaces are better as Analog. Everything else (storage media, display) is better as digital for a number of reasons (for me, at least). Storability, resistance to interference, and reproducability are all benefits to digitization in many instances.
 

EdR

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Well, an analog camera doesn't have 'unlimited' resolution. I think the limiting factor is the film. There will be a point in which ccd arrays will be as small as the cones in the eye, and then we won't be able to tell the difference between film and ccds.
I asked a knowledgeable photographer friend this question, and he said that high-resolution, slow f-stop slide film is roughly the equivalent of a 15 million pixel CCD. So, in high-end cameras we're already there. However, film still has a greater dynamic range, but CCDs are catching up there too.

Whether CCDs have greater resolution than the retina doesn't mean much. If you look at a picture from far enough away, it's the equivalent of raising the resolution of the picture. Take a close-up look at a billboard sometime and you'll see what I mean.

The resolution of retina is actually quite low. There are only around 7 million cones in the retina, although there are over 100 million rods (for low-light vision). The reason vision seems high resolution, is that cones are packed tightly at the center of the visual field, visual resolution away from the very center is very low...try reading some text off to the side while keeping your gaze directed in one place (try it, stare at the word 'gaze' in that sentence and see how far away from that word you can actually decipher letters...it is a shockingly small distance).

To try and make this post relevant to the 'gaming' topic, I think one of the reasons big screen gaming (and movie watching) is so compelling, is that in order to see the whole image on a huge screen, your eyes need to dart around the screen to get a detailed image of what's there (which is what your eyes normally do in 'reality' constantly). On a regular TV, you can almost see the whole image in detail while keeping your eyes in one place.
 

AlbertA

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If you look at a picture from far enough away, it's the equivalent of raising the resolution of the picture. Take a close-up look at a billboard sometime and you'll see what I mean.
Well there is not really a rise in the resolution of the billboard, what is happening is that like in a magazine cover your eye cannot detect the small dots in the paper.
With some simple geometry and assumptions about the arrangement of the cones one can see why that would happen. The magazine printout itself has fixed resolution. But I know what you mean.

The eye itself it's sort of discrete. It has a discrete number of sensors each attached to their own nerve(cones).
Sure there is no quantization for the levels of brightness, but it is still a discrete source.
 

EdR

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The eye itself it's sort of discrete. It has a discrete number of sensors each attached to their own nerve(cones).
Sure there is no quantization for the levels of brightness, but it is still a discrete source
Ah, but cones only work by comparing their inputs with other cones. There are three types, each with peak sensitivity to a given wavelength photon (often called red, blue and green, but this isn't precisely true). Individually the cones don't convey color information, color vision only occurs after a mathematical comparison of the values from the three cone types.

OK, this is now WAY OT...sorry :b
 

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