What the hell does 'moire' do?

[Ummon]

I Wiki'd this, and while I got historical background on it, and a bunch of technical information on how it occurs, I didn't find anything related to monitor features. All the monitors I've seen have it set to '0', and when turned up past a little bit, the image gets all vibrate-y like gas molecules. What the hell is this feature for?

[Jack Burton]

It's has something to do with your monitors ability to display fine texture patters without having a shimmering effect. 

Try it out with nokia monitor test.  http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Other-VIDEO-Tools/Nokia-Monitor-Test.shtml

On most of the monitors I've seen you have to fiddle a bit with the moire setting to get it correct.  Somewhere around 50 is usually right for me.

But my real question is whether or not you want to get rid of the moire effects at all.  Does it tamper with the image accuracy to eliminate moire effects?

I used to crank up the sharpness on my monitors until I learned that all they were doing was applying a photoshop style filter over the image and not really adding anymore detail. 

Is moire doing something similar?  Sacrificing detail for a uniform image?

[Rickn]

Depends how much you want to know...

First off if you like your picture, then it ain't broke and does not need to be fixed.... leave it.

But technically it is based on CRT monitors and the size of the holes in the shadow mask and the size of the Phosphor stipes. it comes into play when running different refresh rates (primarily vertical) against the frequency of the power line.

North America is 60 Hz power line others are 50 hz. This plays a little havoc when used with other Vertical refresh rates. Typically you will notice for lack of better ways to describe... a ripple in the pond effect in corners.

The Moire' adjsutment comensates for that... never did dig into how but it does. Also the focus adjsutment will affect it.

don't know that I was much help, but I tried.

Good luck

Rick

[Ummon]

Makes sense, thanks.