> Stars are perfect point light sources to the eye
But that isn't true rofl. Stars are, in fact, (extremely) large spheres, and can take up more than one pixel if your pixels are small enough.
But that isn't true rofl. Stars are, in fact, (extremely) large spheres, and can take up more than one pixel if your pixels are small enough.
But indeed, not all stars are "point light": the sun as seen from the earth is not. And it is a good thing, because otherwise that would make our sun like a laser, our retinas won't last long...
I think you are mistaking cause end effect. If the sun were a point source, the layout of our eyes (and our behaviours) would have evolved differently to compensate.
Alternatively, if the diameter of the sun (or the apparent diameter of the sun) quickly changed that much, our eyesight is the least of our worries.
The Oculus Quest 2 has a horizontal FOV of 97 degrees. In order for α Centauri to cover two pixels, you would need a display with 6.2179487x10^26 horizontal pixels. 621 yottapixels. Something like a hundred sextillion times "4K" resolution. And that's linear resolution, tag on some more orders of magnitude for display area.
There is a reason parallax is used to measure distance to stars, rather than directly measuring their visual diameter.
Even in outer space, with no atmospheric aberration, there will be some blur for anyone with less than absolutely perfect eyesight.
There will be a point-spread-function because our optics are not ideal (especially with bright point sources), and blur will result from a variety of causes.
Computer graphics are meant to be perceived through human eyeballs. So we can count on the eyes continuing to blur point lights whether you're looking at a screen or at outer space.
Also, the game might be simulating an experience from a character's point of view, and expect the player to be wearing glasses to correct their personal vision defects (to the extent possible).
(The calculated horizontal resolution required for a 2 pixel wide star from the original post should instead be 100,009,624)
The corrected number for star apparent diameter should be 0.006983 arcsec. Depending on how finely you want to resolve the disk, that would take somewhere between a 70 to 140m wide telescope. (With 400nm light)
The largest optical telescope currently under construction is 39.3m wide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope
They are too far away.
It's clearly evident if you look at them in a telescope, especially in observatory.