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Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)

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Re: Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)

#61
post #41
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been nice to show a few more easy-to-understand comparisons. The "street view" image was nice, but blurry. Ditto with the map. I think if the last image of the two buildings had been shown side-by-side with the "correct" perspective, that might have helped explain the article.

I wonder how hard it is to change a game engine to render images like this, and if the effect would be preserved while panning.

I think the difficulty comes from it being context dependent, it's not a consistent distortion of the true image the way most projections are, it identifies synthetic structures in the foreground and warps everything else (including similar structures in the background) around them. It should be possible for an AI filter though.

Re: Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)

#62
post #10

> By legibility I mean that the Piranesi distortion is easier to read, and that to anyone unfamiliar with photographs, that hasn’t grown up with TV, photographs and magazines, the Piranesi version would look much better, and the true perspective would look rather odd. I think this is a key point that people are often unaware of. For instance, whenever I see a modern artist who has painted photorealistic art, I read d…

You make good points, but if we really perceived reality differently than cameras, someone would write an article about that - after all you can take a photo on your smartphone and compare to your IRL view. Yes it's hard to make it match but it's possible. Since no one made an experiment to show this, and since we understand pretty well the optics of a human eye, I think the cameras actually reproduce human vision decently. The aspect of a psychological bias and filling stuff in perhaps distorts in each possible way, so the camera shows the average human perception.

Re: Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)

#63
post #42
post #13

I'll take this opportunity to drop the fact that I'm kind of obsessed with the book "Piranesi", where the main character (named after the artist in the article) survives in a world which is just endless corridors of classical architecture, statues, and staircases. It's an incredibly calming experience, I've listened to the audiobook over 10 times before sleep. Highly recommended.

A truly wonderful novel that I also opened the comments to shill.

we each enter the corridors for our own purposes and yet they are one

Re: Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few "wait what?" moments in the first half of the book that no other books have matched.

Sadly, the ending doesnt live up to the expectations, at least for me.

Yes, could almost have been written for another story altogether.

Re: Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)

#65
post #13

I'll take this opportunity to drop the fact that I'm kind of obsessed with the book "Piranesi", where the main character (named after the artist in the article) survives in a world which is just endless corridors of classical architecture, statues, and staircases. It's an incredibly calming experience, I've listened to the audiobook over 10 times before sleep. Highly recommended.

Loved the book. Bought it in hardcover, based just on the blurb, which sounded so futuristic and imaginative. Surprised me in ways I didn't expect.

Re: Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)

#66
post #13

I'll take this opportunity to drop the fact that I'm kind of obsessed with the book "Piranesi", where the main character (named after the artist in the article) survives in a world which is just endless corridors of classical architecture, statues, and staircases. It's an incredibly calming experience, I've listened to the audiobook over 10 times before sleep. Highly recommended.

I absolutely adored Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, I don't read a _ton_ of fiction, but somehow stumbled into it and recommend it to anyone who will listen.

But I couldn't get into Piranesi at all. The first few chapters never seem to actually go anywhere. It got terrific reviews so maybe it's just too abstract for me.

Re: Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)

#67
post #10

> By legibility I mean that the Piranesi distortion is easier to read, and that to anyone unfamiliar with photographs, that hasn’t grown up with TV, photographs and magazines, the Piranesi version would look much better, and the true perspective would look rather odd. I think this is a key point that people are often unaware of. For instance, whenever I see a modern artist who has painted photorealistic art, I read d…

You make good points, but if we really perceived reality differently than cameras, someone would write an article about that - after all you can take a photo on your smartphone and compare to your IRL view. Yes it's hard to make it match but it's possible. Since no one made an experiment to show this, and since we understand pretty well the optics of a human eye, I think the cameras actually reproduce human vision de…

[dead]

Re: Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)

#68
post #66
post #13

I'll take this opportunity to drop the fact that I'm kind of obsessed with the book "Piranesi", where the main character (named after the artist in the article) survives in a world which is just endless corridors of classical architecture, statues, and staircases. It's an incredibly calming experience, I've listened to the audiobook over 10 times before sleep. Highly recommended.

I absolutely adored Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, I don't read a _ton_ of fiction, but somehow stumbled into it and recommend it to anyone who will listen. But I couldn't get into Piranesi at all. The first few chapters never seem to actually go anywhere. It got terrific reviews so maybe it's just too abstract for me.

It reads like a parable and you are right there isn’t a lot of action. I thought the imagery was very stark and the relation the main character had to the world is similar to an abuse victim rationalizing their situation.

Re: Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)

#69
post #13

I'll take this opportunity to drop the fact that I'm kind of obsessed with the book "Piranesi", where the main character (named after the artist in the article) survives in a world which is just endless corridors of classical architecture, statues, and staircases. It's an incredibly calming experience, I've listened to the audiobook over 10 times before sleep. Highly recommended.

I think about this book ALL the time. It was way more terrifying than calming to me. But still absolutely love it / haunted by it.

Re: Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)

#70
post #35

The panotools wiki has a good comparison of different projections of the same photo. Google Streetview uses equirectangular pictures to store 360° images. Panini is another type of equirectangular. Examples Panini: https://wiki.panotools.org/File:Ben_Equirectangular_panini.j... Equirectangular: https://wiki.panotools.org/File:Big_ben_equirectangular.jpg Full list: https://wiki.panotools.org/Projections

if you have any connection to the admins of that wiki, it would be great to get MultimediaViewer extension enabled - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MultimediaViewer

they're on 1.35 right now which is a bit out of date (lifecycle - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Version_lifecycle) but an older branch of MMV should work fine on 1.35

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