The other day a few friends and I decided to climb mount nittany because he weather was particularly nice out and we had to cross it off of our bucket lists. When we finally got to the top of the mountain we were amazed at the fact that you could have such a perfect view of the campus from this tiny little lookout. As we stood there gazing at the campus trying to figure out where everything was, I realized that I was using a few of my depth cues to help me work out the layout of the town.

I found that a great deal of the depth cues were used. I used aerial perspective to decipher that the mountains in the distance were a bluish color and seemed a bit hazy because the light was scattered by the atmosphere. I used linear perspective to decipher where the roads were close the parallel lines were not converging and in the distance they were converging and forming a vanishing point. I used familiar size with many objects. For instance, I knew how big objects such as Beaver stadium and Thomas were, so I used this as a cue. Also, I used relative height. I could tell that the objects that were highest in my visual field, in this case it was the mountains on the other side of the town, were the farthest away and the objects lower on my visual field, the trees and ground surrounding me, were closest. I used occlusion to tell that the trees, or homes, or whatever was blocking the view of something else, was in front. I also used motion parallax. If a bird flew out of a tree that was just in front of me it seemed to move faster than the cars on the street miles away.