Motion Parallax

When learning lecture eight and the different types of perceptual organizations, one of the monocular cues that stood out to me was the concept of motion parallax. This concept is when objects that are far away seem to move much slower than the objects closer to your eyes. The example we learned in class is when you are taking the train and the trees close to the tracks and window move very fast, whereas the horizon and other distant objects seem to be passing by very slowly. This sparked my thoughts and confusion when I am traveling in an airplane. I have taken airplanes a fair amount of times and this concept has always been so confusing until we had this lesson and learned about motion parallax. The clouds and air right outside the window seemed to pass by in a matter of seconds. While on the other hand, when I looked down, it seems to take a city or part of the ocean a few minutes to completely pass below the plane. I always wondered how this could be possible since planes travel at such high speeds, for long periods of time. However, the motion parallax concept has made it easier to understand this idea. Because the plane is so high up and far away from the land, it seems to take so much longer for the land to pass, other than the objects that I can see much better up close in the window. Because of the greater distance between my eyes and the ground, it takes longer for those objects to pass. This cue, along with the others, is very interesting and explained even the simplest of ideas. The motion parallax concept specifically helped me understand why it took forever to see a city, town, or ocean below pass when traveling in an airplane.

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