Optical Illusion

[Graham Meale]

This is called the Ponzo illusion.

 

[Fogel70]

Sometime I wonder about the difference between what I think we see and what we do see.

I know that these three vans are of exactly the same size (the one at the front and the one at the back are a copy and paste of the one in the middle) but I can't see it :



what do you see ?

(not my illusion).

They should not be of the same size in the picture (if they are of same physical size). As we learned our brain that thing further away must look smaller, it become weird with a picture when the cars would be of same size no matter of the distance. Then we see them as of different physical size.

 

[Fogel70]

So, at what point does the front vehicle disappear?

When they are no longer in the picture?

 

[FrancoD]

This is called the Ponzo illusion.

Yes it is.

Then there is the Ponzi Scheme Illusion , when investors perceive increasing wealth coming their way but in the end there is nothing there at all.

Ponzo, Ponzi and Pizza.

 

[Bobapingu]

I've rotated the image, cropped and masked out the background. The cars are clearly the same size. The original image is an optical illusion and a very good one at that.
In this image, the last car still "looks" a little bigger but not as much as before where we were blind-sided by the strong perspective in the road and trees. The reason the last car still looks a little bigger is because the cars are behind one another causing our brain to conclude that it's further away and if it appears the same absolute size, the brain assumed it's bigger.

From the way the vehicles are stacked in this image, my brain still sees them getting progressively larger. The apparent percentage is just decreased.

Yes, I made that point and explained it. It's another lesser optical illusion but for another reason.

 

[Guy Parsons]

When the moon is low in the sky, near the horizon, it looks bigger. Much the same illusion.

Not that I've tried it but someone said that bend down and look back between your legs at that horizon moon and it looks normal size. At my age not game to attempt that gymnastic. Maybe it's all about viewing it upside down. Anyone care to try?

 

[Guy Parsons]

It all proves to me that vision is 10% eyeball plus 90% brain.

In this case "I imaging" as opposed to the currently popular "AI imaging".

 

[FrancoD]

It all proves to me that vision is 10% eyeball plus 90% brain.

In this case "I imaging" as opposed to the currently popular "AI imaging".

That was pretty much the reason why I posted that photo (found on Facebook...) here, to point out that sometime we think we saw something that in fact wasn't there.

 

[Fogel70]

When the moon is low in the sky, near the horizon, it looks bigger. Much the same illusion.

Not that I've tried it but someone said that bend down and look back between your legs at that horizon moon and it looks normal size. At my age not game to attempt that gymnastic. Maybe it's all about viewing it upside down. Anyone care to try?

Or you can get those glasses that flip what you see upside down.

But do not wear the for too long, as the brain will learn to flip the image you see to adapt. Just like it normally do with the upside down image our eyes capture.

 

[Bobapingu]

It all proves to me that vision is 10% eyeball plus 90% brain.

In this case "I imaging" as opposed to the currently popular "AI imaging".

That was pretty much the reason why I posted that photo (found on Facebook...) here, to point out that sometime we think we saw something that in fact wasn't there.

Exactly! If you've ever been on jury duty and listened to eye-witness accounts, you'd wonder if they were even on the same planet.

 

[Andrew564]

Or at arm's length hold your thumb over the moon, then do it again when the moon gets higher. Pretty effective comparison and saves you falling over.

 

[Dreamscape Photo]

Different focal lengths used?

 

[FrancoD]

Different focal lengths used?

Not my photo, as I already stated, and how it was done has been explained already. Anyway in the original photo there was only the van in the middle. The author of the illusion copied and pasted that van in front and at the back .

nothing else was done to it, it's just our brain that makes up what isn't there.

 

[Horacecoker]

Sometime I wonder about the difference between what I think we see and what we do see.

I know that these three vans are of exactly the same size (the one at the front and the one at the back are a copy and paste of the one in the middle) but I can't see it :



what do you see ?

(not my illusion).

It's an excellent illusion, thanks for posting it. What greatly helps this illusion is the fact that the offset parking on a road in the way the vans are positioned wouldn't happen in real life. All the vans would be parked directly behind each other and you wouldn't be able to see the fronts of the 2nd and third vans. I couldn't think of a way of maneuvering the back two vans behind the first van that way so I've placed them side by side. The back van is the one on the right. The van on the left is the first van which I haven't touched in any way. I cloned the missing parts of the 2nd and third vans from the 1st van. As can be seen and already proven beyond doubt, they are all the same size and if anything, to my eyes the 1st van now looks ever so slightly bigger than the other two!

 

[PhotoTeach2]

Sometime I wonder about the difference between what I think we see and what we do see.

I know that these three vans are of exactly the same size (the one at the front and the one at the back are a copy and paste of the one in the middle) but I can't see it :



what do you see ?

(not my illusion).

What is more mind-boggling is that you would expect the front-car to be larger than the one in back, (especially if shot with a UWA).

 

[Tom Axford]

I think some people are getting themselves (and others) confused because they are not making clear whether they are talking about the size of the vehicles as measured in the image (which is two dimensional) or the size in the three-dimensional scene that we imagine when we look at the picture.

 

[MIcrAZ]

Driving in Europe, all I care about is the car in the back is blocking more than half the road!

 

[Andrew564]

I think everybody here is talking about their perceived vs actual size in the 2D image, I don't think there's any confusion.

 

[Bob A L]

Sometime I wonder about the difference between what I think we see and what we do see.

I know that these three vans are of exactly the same size (the one at the front and the one at the back are a copy and paste of the one in the middle) but I can't see it :



what do you see ?

(not my illusion).

What is more mind-boggling is that you would expect the front-car to be larger than the one in back, (especially if shot with a UWA).

That' the part that my brain is still chewing on. I look at the image presented and wonder why the vehicle further away isn't smaller than the closest vehicle. Photo is backwards in relation to what we see in the real world. If objects are the same physical size, they are going to appear smaller with distance, not larger. ????

 

[Andrew564]

It's a photo of one van which has simply been cut and pasted in front and behind, so three identical images in a row of the same van, not a photo of three vans of the same size one behind the other.