P3D Re: Stereography of whole planets

[roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (John W Roberts)]

>Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 02:41:00 -0700
>From: Duncan Waldron <J.Waldron@xxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: P3D Re: Stereography of whole planets

Duncan, you make numerous interesting points in your post - I'll only
comment on a few:

>...I guess that if a monoscopic version of an image doesn't appeal to me, 
>then neither will a stereo one. 

Of course, there is a class of stereo photographs deliberately designed to
be confusing/uninteresting in 2D, but to look good in 3D.

>I guess a lot of the appeal of stereoscopy for me is in showing a 3D
>effect where none can ordinarily be seen. 

Same here. I like many kinds of stereo imagery, but that's definitely one
of my major interests.

>> But not even the astronauts orbiting in space get anything other than a
>> "flat" view of our spherical earth.  Any stereography of planets, using
>> hyper baselines (very hyper indeed!), or rotation of the subject, will 
>> not be much less realistic than a computer generated stereo of same. 

>Not much less realistic? Surely they will be a lot more realistic. How can
>a real photo possibly be less realistic than a computer-generated image?

Whether you define "realistic" as human-perceivable depiction of some aspect
of reality, or the narrower definition of what an unaided human might
perceive, I believe one can readily come up with plausible situations in
which a real photo would be *less* "realistic" than a computer-generated
image. For a start, even a digitally manipulated image from a photograph
could be considered computer generated. Furthermore, there are situations
in which a human could perceive something, but where conventional photography
doesn't work well.

As an extreme example from another field, a recent television show on the
making of the movie "twister" pointed out that they basically *couldn't*
use recorded sounds from a real tornado, because in any effort to get such
a recording, the sound of the wind hitting the microphone overpowers all
other sounds. To get the most realistic sound effects possible, they
interviewed witnesses to real tornadoes, then had the Foley artists completely
fabricate the sound effects.

John R


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