Originally Posted by mithrandir
By the way, chips have a long way to go according to this quote from page 3: "Looking at a 120-degree field of view, the eye's resolution is equivalent to about 576 megapixels."
Rob
I too think that the 576 Megapixel estimate is a little off-base. In base terms an individual cone or rod cell is the practical equivalent of a detector pixel. I found a few resources on the Web and think that the
Wikipedia article on the retina provides as good an estimate as any.
7 million cones
100 million rods
Since the cones are the cells are the cells that are used for high acuity and color vision (they are densely packed at the fovea near the center of the retina), those cells would provide the best estimate. So for all practical purposes, the retina of a single eye is equivalent to about a 7 megapixel detector.
Before anybody jumps to conclusions, it should be noted that the perceptive field is based on a moving eye with the brain stitching the details together. As a result, the visual system probably has access to considerably more data than that of a 7 megapixel camera.
Steve