> don't know if that would be reproducible on a regular RGB display, though
It wouldn't, and also not with standard camera sensors. The RGB subpixels correspond to the main wave length sensitivity of the three color cells in the eye. I think for tetrachromy there is a fourth cell for UV light with shorter wavelength than blue. There is no way to support this with our current tech stack.
this reminds me of how designing for "the average human" leaves out anyone with even slightly superhuman capabilities, and how frustrating this is for us when our capabilities surpass what designers thought were good enough. for us, this happens frequently with monitor PPI and HMD PPD, but i can imagine someone with tetrachromy theoretically being able to perceive colors that computers can't reproduce, and wondering why computers lack these colors, only to find that this is supposedly an impossibility that was optimized out
as an example, apple's new HMD advertises things that simply can't possibly be true, so we probably won't be getting one any time soon. there's zero reason to upgrade from a simple hp reverb g2 when the only difference between two blurry headsets is that one of them costs four times more. we'd rather be conscious of this than try to fix it when no solution currently exists
this isn't saying displays for tetrachromy should have been the norm, as that's very wasteful on most people. but maybe displays for tetrachromy could have existed, somewhere, in some market, just like tech devices with placebo-level specs tend to exist in some market
I was surprised by your pronoun usage, then I clicked on your profile. Reminded me to think of the ambiguity of the English "you", in contrast to "I"/"we".
Edit: To add a bit to the topic. Tetrachromy seems a quite interesting example for "superhuman" sensory ability. Normal people have three cone cells, and the maximum/minimum activation of each cell gives rise to 2^3=8 "primary" subjectively dissimilar colors: 000 (black), 001 (blue), 010 (green), 011 (cyan), 100 (red), 101 (magenta), 110 (yellow), 111 (white). All the others look like blends of the former. But for tetrachromy there are 2^4=16 different such "primary" colors. That's a substantial difference.
yeah i wish there were an easier way to say we have DID than making multiple HN accounts, we were even personally recommended to do that by HN's moderation team but opted not to because we need the shared rep and comments.
including a disclaimer in every comment (which we have to do if we include a signature, because then people will ask what the signature means) is also somewhat tiring, so right now the pronoun usage is a bit of an unsolved problem, hehe.
glad to see the profile did its job though
as for the edit, another commenter says there's still no evidence that people with true tetrachromy have a fourth primary color. that's not to say they don't, but just that it may be years or decades until a study conclusively proves its existence, if there is one
It wouldn't, and also not with standard camera sensors. The RGB subpixels correspond to the main wave length sensitivity of the three color cells in the eye. I think for tetrachromy there is a fourth cell for UV light with shorter wavelength than blue. There is no way to support this with our current tech stack.