Does resolution affect your eyesight?

[Antarct1c]

It's pretty common that people use resolutions lower than their monitor's native resolution in CS GO and other games. I personally find it "crispier" to play with lowered resolution in some games, but I restrict myself from doing so because I'm afraid my eyes will get messed up.
If I have a choice between 1920x1080 and 1280x720, is it better for eyes to use lower or higher resolution, or resolution doesn't affect eyesight?

[crunchyfrog]

Not in this example no.

By lowering a resolution slightly it's not going to do anything to affect your eyesight.

What DOES affect eyesihgt uis doing thngs like having an older resoltuoin (like when I play PS1 games on a large screen) that can look smeary. That sort of thing can be tiring for eyes long term as you're trying to focus on something that isn't focused in the first place.

Also long spaces of playing games on a screen can cause issues with eyes over the years so you should always keep up with your optician too.

But generally speaking, no nothing to worry about.

Consider this - if it were, can you imagine how many ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ legal cases there would be?

[SLAYER187]

Your eye's focus much like a camera lense so changing resolutions will not hurt your eye's in fact resolutions are for a displays size (to fit the screen) and display properly also yes easier on eyes. If you need to change it go ahead you will be fine,do a little research on resolutions it never hurts to do so. CHEERS!

[Thermal Lance]

Originally posted by JR APOCALYPSE aka MR E.:

Your eye's focus much like a camera lense so changing resolutions will not hurt your eye's in fact resolutions are for a displays size (to fit the screen) and display properly also yes easier on eyes. If you need to change it go ahead you will be fine,do a little research on resolutions it never hurts to do so. CHEERS!

Not even mentioning... When playing on a flatscreen. You don't exactly have your eyes change focus constantly.

The only thing that could be bad for your eyes is if you're playing an older game in 4k or something and the text is so small you need to almost kiss your screen to read.

Outside from that, just play at which resolution feels the best for you and, of course, take a break once in a while to let your eyes rest a bit.

Edit: I'm speaking apart from the expected focus change when looking at an image that refreshes constantly like a monitor. I really meant like it makes absolutely no different if you're looking at 480p or 4k when it comes to focus itself.

But, if the resolution is so low that you have to squint to figure out what it is or if you get closer to your screen for that reason. Now that's the real issue.

Thus why I said to pick the resolution feels the best for you. I play some games at 720p and others at 1080p depending on what it is. Some games I might even drop lower especially if it is sprite based because I think shape edges look odd next to sprites.

[EvilWolf]

It should be noted any effects these types of thing may have on your eyes goes away after 3-5 hours of not doing it.

[Nico]

4k with 8x msaa and 240hz will make it more pleasant to your eyes, if anything.
What could "affect" your eyesight is brightness (if your eyes are already tired and you don't get enough sunlight per day) or screen flickering (like strobe backlight from ulmb or "non flicker free" monitors).

If a game is not optimized for said resolution like someone mentioned, making the text smaller and requiring to force your eyes, that's another issue.
Same thing with sprite based games, they may not scale properly, but that just makes them "look" bad

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by EvilWolf:

It should be noted any effects these types of thing may have on your eyes goes away after 3-5 hours of not doing it.

As long as you take adequate breaks and time it correctly.

YOU WILL get eye strain if you do it for these perdios but keep doing it for long periods and go long into the night for example.

It's basically looking up the recommended times and sticking to them. Of course it goes without saying one can always talk to your optician about this.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Nico:

4k with 8x msaa and 240hz will make it more pleasant to your eyes, if anything.
What could "affect" your eyesight is brightness (if your eyes are already tired and you don't get enough sunlight per day) or screen flickering (like strobe backlight from ulmb or "non flicker free" monitors).

If a game is not optimized for said resolution like someone mentioned, making the text smaller and requiring to force your eyes, that's another issue.
Same thing with sprite based games, they may not scale properly, but that just makes them "look" bad

It goes all ways too. Not just by INCREASING resolution and squinting to make text readable but as I said if you play older games and the resolutions poor or less defined, it can be smeary and you can wear out your eyes which a\re constantly trying to make focus on something they can't.

It's something I take care over as I play o many different platforms.
\
I find some games on certain consoles will make my eyes run after a while.

[ulia]

Aliased and difficult to distinguish visuals can and do cause eye strain, which is not limited to videogames on a screen. Whether fatigue itself is a cause of permanent damage is unknown, but it can definitely lead to habits that are quite bad for your eyes.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by ulia:

Aliased and difficult to distinguish visuals can and do cause eye strain, which is not limited to videogames on a screen. Whether fatigue itself is a cause of permanent damage is unknown, but it can definitely lead to habits that are quite bad for your eyes.

Fatigue if often enough absolutely can lead to damage. It strains the muscles that are used to focus the eye.

It happemed to me to some degree before my optician addressed it.

[EvilWolf]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Originally posted by EvilWolf:

It should be noted any effects these types of thing may have on your eyes goes away after 3-5 hours of not doing it.

As long as you take adequate breaks and time it correctly.

YOU WILL get eye strain if you do it for these perdios but keep doing it for long periods and go long into the night for example.

It's basically looking up the recommended times and sticking to them. Of course it goes without saying one can always talk to your optician about this.

The last time I was concerned about this the mayoclinic article I was reading said whatever detrimental effects you get from eye strain, no matter the duration endured, will go away when you sleep and rest your eyes for that extended period of time.

[Ice Robertson]

Dunno much on the subject but i know you shouldn't play in a dark room with the bright monitor.

Well someone told me that..
My IPS monitors have lower blue light which might be good as well.

[Azza ☠]

Screen resolution and refresh rates can affect your eyes, but not as you would assume.

It's more about the animation movements and frame flipping. That's why monitors have a back light too, to avoid the screen flicker during frames. A high-end monitor tends to have better eye care and quality builtin. A TV/PC hybrid monitor with low refresh rate and response time is the worst.

When you watch TV, you might have a movie play out at 1080p with only 24 FPS. Yet it appears smooth and comfortable to watch for the 2 hours worth. TVs will blur the pixels together and the frames are at a continuous rate which doesn't change.

With a PC monitor, the pixels need to be razor sharp so you can sit up closer and read the small text. A big explosion or action scene might take an impact on the graphics card handing out those frames. Therefore a higher resolution and refresh rate tends to be better. Plus you can use G-SYNC or FreeSYNC to smooth out the frame rate flow even more - syncing the monitors Hz with the FPS.

The human eyes doesn't care about the FPS, rather the missing movement in what it considers as animation. It's smart enough however to full in some of the missing gaps. However, the more it does that, the more stress and strain is put on it.

Your human eyes also attempts to calculate in distance, so staring at a flat screen can affect that too. You might wish to look away from the screen every now and then or take breaks between matches. Specially if playing during the night and have nothing out in the distance to also look at.

[ZAP]

People lower the resolution for more FPS, not picture quality. You're experiencing a placebo effect because you misunderstood the reason why it's a thing.

[76561198356019466]

No, why do you ask?[pbs.twimg.com]

[Antarct1c]

Originally posted by ZAP:

People lower the resolution for more FPS, not picture quality. You're experiencing a placebo effect because you misunderstood the reason why it's a thing.

I do not experience a placebo effect, I understand how monitors, resolution and FPS works with monitor's Hz system maybe even more than you. The games feel, and in fact are more responsive and there is a difference in FPS even if refresh rate is 75 and you compare 75 and 300 fps for example. But it also looks more aesthetically pleasing for me, this is a personal preference. That was not the question though.