Perspectives--What you see isn't what you get

Discussion concerning the first major re-evaluation of Dewey B. Larson's Reciprocal System of theory, updated to include counterspace (Etheric spaces), projective geometry, and the non-local aspects of time/space.
Post Reply
User avatar
bperet
Posts: 1501
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2004 1:43 am
Location: 7.5.3.84.70.24.606
Contact:

Perspectives--What you see isn't what you get

Post by bperet »

I have been continuing research into the human perspective on how we interpret spatial and temporal structure with our physical senses. Since our primary sense instrument for "observing" they physical universe is our eyes, I ran a few simulations on what the eyes interpret.

First, is the normal, vanishing-point that stereoscopic vision sends to our brains. It is technically a "counterspace" perspective, where parallel lines are radial, converging on a point at infinity. The railroad tracks in the computer model are composed of boxes only, and the ground plane made of squares. In this view, lines remain straight, but right angles no longer appear as right angles:
Lens-Perspective.jpg
Lens-Perspective.jpg (15.6 KiB) Viewed 7764 times
If one were to switch to a standard, "Euclidean" view, where right angles must remain right angles, the view is called "orthographic" and the SAME picture would look like this:
Lens-Orthographic.jpg
Lens-Orthographic.jpg (22.96 KiB) Viewed 7764 times
Which looks a bit odd to our eyes... the tracks, though moving from our eyes towards infinity, are just sticking straight up with the railroad ties stacked up in a pile... BUT, all the right angles can be measured as being 90-degrees, and parallel lines converge at the PLANE at infinity, rather than the point. The sky is missing because we are looking from 2m high, on a slight angle down to the plane of the tracks, 500m away... because of the lack of perspective, we never see past the ground plane. The staggered colored bars are actually the SQUARES of the ground plane--there are different scales in the horizontal and vertical directions. They are STILL squares, but appear distorted into rectangles because the scales are not uniform in the picture.

Another kind of perspective view is commonly called "Wide Angle", where the horizontal field of vision is GREATER than that which our eyes can normally process--a full, 180-degrees in this case:
Lens-WideAngle.jpg
Lens-WideAngle.jpg (15.33 KiB) Viewed 7764 times
If you compare this to the original, perspective view, it is very similar except the ground plane appears non-linear... the formerly straight lines now appear as curves (circular paths) about the point at infinity. Note that everything is still square and straight--the distortion appears because the field of view has increased beyond our normal comprehension (the projection is cylindrical... straight lines are the ones wrapped around the circumference of a cylinder).

Up to now, the perspective have been monocular, looking forward with a typical, convex lens. But what happens if we didn't have that convergence provided by a lens? The lens gives our consciousness the appearance of straight lines, so without it, straight lines will appear curved, as though you are looking through a bubble. Of course, everything is still parallel and orthogonal, despite what we see through this "fisheye":
Lens-Fisheye.gif
Lens-Fisheye.gif (21.33 KiB) Viewed 7764 times
Now this can be extended a full 360-degrees, in other words, you can see in every direction, rather than just half:
Lens-Spherical.jpg
Lens-Spherical.jpg (18.14 KiB) Viewed 7764 times
Again, all the geometry in this picture is boxes and squares... all straight lines and right angles. If we were born with this kind of eye, this is what we would see as "straight"! HOW we see is quite important to WHAT we see, particularly when we start using instrumentalities, which do not often parallel the normal perspective we are used to.

Another variant is a project you may have run across if you have ever visited an Omnimax Theatre...
Lens-Omnimax.gif
Lens-Omnimax.gif (27.34 KiB) Viewed 7764 times
This perspective makes use of a distorted "environment"--namely, a projection screen that is a half-dome. When this image is projected upon the curved surface of the dome-like theatre screen, the curves now appear as straight lines again--the normal, perspective view we are familiar with, except now runs in an arc around us, parallelling "reality" more closely.

The final perspective is that of the panorama--a view that wraps around, so the left margin matches the right, and the view can be rotated around for a complete view.
Lens-Panoramic.jpg
Lens-Panoramic.jpg (18.34 KiB) Viewed 7764 times
As you can see, what you see may not be what is actually there. By using microscopes, telescopes or interferometry, one must be sure of the assumptions going in to our system of recognition. Even our own vision may be distorted substantially through the use of psychoactive chemicals, producing similar results when the brain fails to process the normal, perspective projection. A lot of variables go into the perspective we have on things, and this summary is only for the optical ones!
Every dogma has its day...
Post Reply