Computer Science An Overview _J. Glenn Brookshear _11th Edition
Have you ever noticed the weird “glittery” appearance that striped shirts and ties
have on television screens? This is the result of the phenomenon called
aliasing,
which occurs when a pattern in the desired image meshes inappropriately with the
density of the pixels comprising the image. As an example, suppose a portion of the
desired image consists of alternating black and white stripes but the center of all
the pixels happens to fall only on the black stripes. The object would then be ren-
dered as being completely black. But, if the object moves slightly, the center of all the
pixels may fall on the white stripes, meaning that the object would suddenly change
to white. There are a variety of ways to compensate for this annoying effect. One is to
render each pixel as the average of a small area in the image rather than as the
appearance of a precise single point.