You can't introduce a specific viewing distance requirement. Everyone will sit wherever they want to to observe the screen door effect.
Your threshold of actually seeing it and irritating you is rather low, which doesn't mean that there aren't many people with much better vision who don't tolerate it even in the slightest hint, shape or form.
Man, discussing anything with you is always a blast. Unfounded assumptions of things you have
absolutely no way of knowing? Of course! Taking the fact that there is variability in human perception and running with it so far you crash into the sun? Sure, why not?
Like, what on earth do you know about my visual acuity? Also, no, my threshold for seeing that and it irritating me is
high. A low threshold means something is easily achieved.
I never introduced a specific viewing distance requirement. I said that the screen door effect is dependent on pixels per degree as well as the ratio of illuminated pixels to dark surrounding grid of your display (i.e. the relation between pixel size and pixel pitch). In general, human visual acuity is at its peak within a ~5° circle at the center of our vision and we generally have sharp vision for about 40°, with pretty severe detail loss beyond that. So if you want your monitor to look sharp without forcing a ton of strenuous eye movement (which causes both short and long term eye strain), you adjust your viewing distance so that the monitor roughly fills that 40-degree circle. And yes, there is indeed variance in both people's eyesight and people's preferences - for me, 32" at what I consider normal desk viewing distances - about an arm's length, or ~90cm - is too large for long-term comfort, even if it can be more immersive. It would just force too much eye movement for comfort. On the other end of the spectrum you have pro esports players who sit 15-20cm away from their monitors while playing. But they also exclusively use 24" monitors (typically 1080p).
If that kind of distance is your preference, then I can indeed see how the screen door effect might bother you, but then you're also making extremely poor use of your monitor overall, as even a 24" monitor as those distances is going to be well outside of your sharp field of vision, and going larger at that distance would just be throwing money out the window as you literally wouldn't be able to see it. And even with
perfect vision, 1440p on a decent-quality 27" panel will have zero screen door effect from ~30cm onwards. The exception here would be a mointor with exceptionally small pixels and a lot of dark space between them - as many older, lower quality panels had, especially TV panels.
So, the possible options here are:
- You have superhuman vision (which you don't)
- You only have experience with poor quality LCD panels (possible, I have no idea)
- You like to sit so close to your monitor that your nose is almost touching the panel (possible, but unlikely)
- You've convinced yourself that you're seeing a screen door effect when what you're seeing is really something else (could be an overly aggressive anti-glare coating, could be jaggedness or pixelation, could be just the inherent imperfections of human vision, could be whatever)
My money? It's on the latter. Yes, the screen door effect can absolutely be observed on a 1440p display of any size if you get close enough, but unless your panel is absolutely
shit, any combination of monitor size, viewing distance and visual acuity sufficient to actually see it will be
extremely uncomfortable to use.