[graffix]

> Stars are perfect point light sources to the eye, they will not cover multiple pixels unless you are doing an intentional bloom effect

On any real camera, stars always cover multiple pixels (the entire screen strictly speaking). This is described by a point-spread function (PSF), where the "least blurry" physically realizable PSF is the Airy disk. The bloom effect occurs due to the long tails of the PSF. Inasmuch as stars appear as perfect points to the eye, it's down to perceptual limits and (I suspect) heavy filtering in the visual cortex.

Not saying Carmack is wrong about VR and video game rendering here. Just that if you're trying to replicate real sensors, the right way is precisely what he says to avoid. You must somehow draw

> large, dim stars

During a recent effort to implement physically-accurate star rendering at work, I had access to a photograph of the night sky. Bright stars visibly and clearly covered 3x3 pixels- more in reality, due to the above.

[kridsdale1]

I guess as a VR dev you have to first decide, are you making a first person perspective for a human with eyes, or for a pair of camera lenses, with all the mechanical and optical artifacts that comes with that? Humans don’t see lens flare. But our cinematic cultural library now makes us expect them in games, even if the character is biological and not wearing glasses.