Notes:

The perceptual consequences of a visual system limited by neural sampling density are completely different from a visual system which is optically limited. This slide illustrates the common situation where optical blurring of the retinal image limits vision by making it impossible to resolve the individual stripes on the animal's coat.

This simulationwas prepared by blurring the original image until the finer stripes of the animal's coat vanished as blurring reduces their contrast to a level below our visual threshold. This is the familiar experience we all share in central vision: extremely fine patterns are no longer visible because they don't have enough contrast.

However, the situation is entirely different when neural undersampling, not optical blurring, is the limiting factor for spatial resolution.