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Re:A Pixel Is Not a Little Square (1995) [pdf] by angersock on Sunday November 16, 2014 @01:06PM (#8614890)
So, you made it to the middle of the second page?

Anti-aliasing is a direct result of the fact that pixels are point-samples--the idea is to combine multiple samples and weight them so that the collection of point samples (in the form of a frame buffer) still represents a perceptually-reasonable form of the image.

Re:A Pixel Is Not a Little Square (1995) [pdf] by davrosthedalek on Sunday November 16, 2014 @01:34PM (#8614967)
Sorry, but you got it backwards. Exactly because pixels are /not/ point samples, but have an area, point sampling does not work, and you need anti-aliasing. In the limit of infinite resolution/area of the pixels gets infinitely small, point-sampling would be enough.

You say it yourself: Since solving the integration over the pixel area is generally hard, we approximate the integration with multiple point samples.

Re:A Pixel Is Not a Little Square (1995) [pdf] by angersock on Sunday November 16, 2014 @02:06PM (#8615065)
Hm, I think I see the point you're getting at.

It's still a good paper. :)