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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #160 on: May 15, 2018, 08:17:47 PM »
It occurs to me:

Regardless of the distance of H per this odd take on perdpective, all H points will be on the same plane.

That's all my test is examining. Is that plane same as the plane of eye-level, no matter what height eye level is at. I don't see anything about using lines of perspective to evaluate that claim that would run contrary to EnaG perspective explanation.

I'm searching for the eyelevel horizontal vanishing plane; not a point on the plane or a distance along that plane.

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Offline AATW

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #161 on: May 15, 2018, 09:42:13 PM »
Consider this:

We have four jelly beans. One is on the floor at your feet, the other is on the floor 20 feet ahead of you, one is on the floor 100 feet ahead from you, and the other is on the floor ahead of you on the distant horizon (assuming that we can see it). Where would we need to place our eyeball to see whether all three jellybeans line up?

My answer:

Clearly, our eye would need to be exactly center with the line of jelly beans. If we look at the scene from any other angle or position we cannot say whether they all line up or not. At any other position they would appear in different positions relative to each other.
Interestingly, I think you may just have proven horizon dip, inadvertently

This is a diagram showing your scenario at the top. As you say, if you look at ground level the four jelly beans should line up perfectly.

But what happens if you take the first 3 jelly beans and raise them to an altitude as shown at the bottom of my diagram? For those 3 to line up you have to be looking at the same height as the jelly beans, but then how can the 4th jelly bean still line up? They are no longer in a straight line, so it will appear to be below that level - by your own definition, that's the horizon. There's your horizon dip. Clearly here I've greatly exaggerated the angle.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #162 on: May 15, 2018, 09:59:04 PM »
Consider this:

We have four jelly beans. One is on the floor at your feet, the other is on the floor 20 feet ahead of you, one is on the floor 100 feet ahead from you, and the other is on the floor ahead of you on the distant horizon (assuming that we can see it). Where would we need to place our eyeball to see whether all three jellybeans line up?

My answer:

Clearly, our eye would need to be exactly center with the line of jelly beans. If we look at the scene from any other angle or position we cannot say whether they all line up or not. At any other position they would appear in different positions relative to each other.
Interestingly, I think you may just have proven horizon dip, inadvertently

This is a diagram showing your scenario at the top. As you say, if you look at ground level the four jelly beans should line up perfectly.

But what happens if you take the first 3 jelly beans and raise them to an altitude as shown at the bottom of my diagram? For those 3 to line up you have to be looking at the same height as the jelly beans, but then how can the 4th jelly bean still line up? They are no longer in a straight line, so it will appear to be below that level - by your own definition, that's the horizon. There's your horizon dip. Clearly here I've greatly exaggerated the angle.

Great. I see from your diagram that you agree that the viewer's eye needs to be in a straight line path with the jelly bean points. Bobby therefore needs to put his camera in exact center line with the string and water level of the water device.

The camera can't be looking down at the points, or up at the points, to see if the points line up; just as you can't have your eyes higher than the jellybeans to see whether they line up.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 10:01:38 PM by Tom Bishop »

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Offline AATW

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #163 on: May 15, 2018, 10:05:49 PM »
Great. I see from your diagram that you agree that the viewer's eye needs to be in a straight line path with the jelly bean points. Bobby therefore needs to put his camera in exact center line with the string and water level of the water device.

The camera can't be looking down at the points, or up at the points, to see if the points line up; just as you can't have your eyes higher than the jellybeans to see whether they line up.
I do agree. I guess in Bobby's apparatus the first two jelly beans are the two columns of water, they will naturally be level with one another so if they line up then you can be sure that is eye level and therefore compare the horizon to that.

I see you ignored the actual point of my post though, if four jelly beans are in a line on the ground and the 4th is at the horizon then yes, if the ground is perfectly flat they should all line up. If you raise the first 3 of those to the same height and leave the 4th where it is then they won't line up, they are literally not in a straight line any more, there's your horizon dip. Yes? If not, where is my error?
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 10:07:42 PM by AllAroundTheWorld »
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #164 on: May 15, 2018, 11:10:09 PM »
There is nothing wrong with your conclusion. They should all line up on a flat surface. My point was only that you need to ensure that your eye is perfectly level with the line of jelly beans and you cannot be looking down or up at them.

The jellybeans in Bobby's experiment are the two water surfaces in the water device and the horizon. The camera needs to line up with the two water surfaces to see if the horizon lines up with it. The pictures Bobby has shown shows that the number of pixels between the top of the picture and the water device surfaces/white string were less than the number of pixels between the bottom of the picture and the water surfaces/white string.

See my post on page 7:

Quote from: Tom Bishop
The distance from the top of the picture to the string is 419 pixels and the distance from the bottom of the picture to the string is 485 pixels. This means the center of camera lens is below at the level of the water, looking up at it.

This suggested that the camera was looking up at the device and everything was not perfectly leveled.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 11:15:14 PM by Tom Bishop »

Offline hexagon

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #165 on: May 16, 2018, 07:08:29 AM »
I keep rereading the  sections “why the ship’s hull disappears before the masthead” and “perspectives at sea” and though it sounds like he’s describing perspective as I understand it, he’s applying it in a way that is nonsensical to me. I get his argument about equidistant lines, but I can’t for the life of me deduce how he’s demarcing the horizon.

Each example, the surface appears to slope up to eye level, but then run parallel to (or coincident upon)the eyeline.

But how is that point figured? What’s happening here?

What determines the point at which the ground stops its apparent upward slope? Where does that H point that marks the horizon occur? Is dependent and how far above you the object lost to the horizon is? In other words, there is no horizon point. It’s a variable. The tops of tree are lost to the “horizon” further away than the trunks are?


What is determining where the red line appears to stop sloping upward and the blue line is level?

Is H variable, even if I’m not changing my height over the ground?


The key for understanding this idea of perspective is the introduction to the section "PERSPECTIVE ON THE SEA". There he describes some observations he made.  Basically he observed that far away people seem to melt with the street. This effect is obviously the consequence of the limited optical resolution of our eyes. But for him this is the key to understand perspective. The limiting angle of optical resolution is something like 1°, but for him this is the angle of perspective lines relative to ground going away from the vanishing point.

Regarding any explanation about the vanishing point, this point is always at eye level. The consequence of this is, that point most far away to be observed is always at eye-level (anything beyond the vanishing point is to small to be visible). Within in this framework this is logical consequence, there is no other possibility. And cause the angle is fixed, the the distance to the vanishing point is not fixed. It moves away with your elevation, it comes closer if you go down.

Therefor, if you are at the sea, the point most far away is the horizon. Therefor the horizon is always at eye-level. There is no other option within this model.

Of course, all this is based on misunderstandings of optics, oversimplified drawings and so on. The biggest drawback is, that he explains everything only in a vertical plane. But perspective works in all directions, it is isotropic. Would you apply his model also to the horizontal plane, everything would look like if we would live in a tunnel. Obviously he never thought about all the consequences of his model. It is also not quite clear why the sun is visible anyway in England, because it is always further away than the horizon. OK, it is bigger and higher in the sky, but I guess that if you would put numbers into his model, you would find lots of contradictions regarding height, size and distance.

But anyway, this what comes closest to a theory in the whole book and is the most central part of all his "experiments", observations and explanations. And therefor this obsession of the flat-earth believers with this "horizon at eye-level" claim. If this fails, most of the other stuff will also fail. It's the house of cards everything is build upon. So they will never accept anything, that is in contradiction to this claim. 

 

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Offline Tumeni

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #166 on: May 16, 2018, 07:49:09 AM »
See my post on page 7:

Quote from: Tom Bishop
The distance from the top of the picture to the string is 419 pixels and the distance from the bottom of the picture to the string is 485 pixels. This means the center of camera lens is below at the level of the water, looking up at it.

This suggested that the camera was looking up at the device and everything was not perfectly leveled.

....so 904 pixels in total, and the centre should be 452?

So the error is 33/904 in both directions, or 4%.

Do you consider that a significant error, in the context of the experiment? 
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Offline AATW

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #167 on: May 16, 2018, 07:56:27 AM »
There is nothing wrong with your conclusion. They should all line up on a flat surface.
Right. So...you raise the first 3 up so they are at altitude - all 3 at the same altitude as each other. If your eye is at that altitude and you look across the 3 of them so they all line up then the 4th, at the horizon, will now appear below that level. Right? It can't possibly line up because it is not physically aligned. There's your horizon dip. And that would occur on a flat earth or a globe for slightly different reasons. The horizon is physically a point on the ground. The two jelly beans or water tubes or whatever are at an altitude. There is no way the two points at the same altitude and the one on the ground can form a straight line.

I agree that in Bobby's experiment the result is not clear but I think with the equipment he has made and on a clear enough day at a high enough altitude he would show a clear result.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #168 on: May 16, 2018, 07:56:50 AM »
....so 904 pixels in total, and the centre should be 452?

So the error is 33/904 in both directions, or 4%.

Do you consider that a significant error, in the context of the experiment?

So you want to try and manipulate with statistics now in attempt to downplay the need to align the camera?

904 pixels is a pretty low resolution photograph. Lets add some zeros to the differences seen.

4190 pixels vs 4850 pixels -- Yes, the difference is significant.

41900 pixels vs 48500 pixels -- Yes, the difference is significant

There is nothing wrong with your conclusion. They should all line up on a flat surface.
Right. So...you raise the first 3 up so they are at altitude - all 3 at the same altitude as each other. If your eye is at that altitude and you look across the 3 of them so they all line up then the 4th, at the horizon, will now appear below that level. Right? It can't possibly line up because it is not physically aligned. There's your horizon dip. And that would occur on a flat earth or a globe for slightly different reasons. The horizon is physically a point on the ground. The two jelly beans or water tubes or whatever are at an altitude. There is no way the two points at the same altitude and the one on the ground can form a straight line.

I agree that in Bobby's experiment the result is not clear but I think with the equipment he has made and on a clear enough day at a high enough altitude he would show a clear result.

Why are you rambling? We know that the horizon will dip or be in surplus if all three jelly beans are not lined up. Bobby needs to align his eye with the jelly beans for this experiment. Bobby needs to align the camera with the water level of the water device. He can't be looking down at it, or looking up at it.

When you are looking up at the water device, the straight line from your eye is now pointing in to the sky! No wonder the horizon might appear to slightly dip.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2018, 08:07:27 AM by Tom Bishop »

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Offline AATW

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #169 on: May 16, 2018, 08:12:32 AM »
We know that the horizon will dip or be in surplus if all three jelly beans are not lined up.
Right. And the horizon is a point on the ground.
On a round earth it is basically the edge of the globe as it curves away from you.
On a flat earth it is the furthest point you can see on the flat earth, yes?
But either way it's a point on the ground.

So if your first two jelly beans are at altitude, the same altitude as each other, and the third jelly bean is on the ground then those three beans cannot be in a straight line. If you look across the first two so they line up, the third will appear to be below the other two. That's your horizon dip. How can you possibly think that three jelly beans where two are at altitude and the other is on the ground can form a straight line?  ???
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline Tom Bishop

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #170 on: May 16, 2018, 08:14:27 AM »
How can you possibly think that three jelly beans where two are at altitude and the other is on the ground can form a straight line?  ???

This is testing the Flat Earth Theory of whether the horizon is at eye level. Read the title of this thread. Did you forget that already? Are you just arguing to argue?

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Offline AATW

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #171 on: May 16, 2018, 08:20:04 AM »
This is testing the Flat Earth Theory of whether the horizon is at eye level.
I understand that. And so far 4 different experiments have shown that it isn't at eye level.
And your own thought experiment explains why.

Do you agree the horizon is a point on the ground?
Do you agree that "eye level" is looking straight in front of you, parallel to the ground?

If you agree those two things then if you have two jelly beans at the same altitude as one another and you look across them that is eye level.
If the 3rd jelly bean is on the ground at the horizon then those 3 jelly beans cannot possibly be in a straight line.

The experiments confirm that but it's just basic geometry.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline Tumeni

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #172 on: May 16, 2018, 08:35:34 AM »
The distance from the top of the picture to the string is 419 pixels and the distance from the bottom of the picture to the string is 485 pixels. This means the center of camera lens is below at the level of the water, looking up at it.

Are you just arguing to argue?

Again, do you consider this a significant error in the experiment? It's perfectly possible for it to be within the bounds of experimental error, and still be valid.
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Offline hexagon

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #173 on: May 16, 2018, 08:44:19 AM »
If the center of the picture, which should be identical to the center of the optical system of the camera is really already below the horizon in the picture, the whole thing is useless. Don't make it so easy form them, you can do better...

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Offline Tumeni

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #174 on: May 16, 2018, 09:06:09 AM »
If the center of the picture, which should be identical to the center of the optical system of the camera is really already below the horizon in the picture, the whole thing is useless. Don't make it so easy form them, you can do better...

So you would be happy if the experimenter mounted the camera on a frame attached to the cage, with an adjustment bracket, and took setup shots, counting the pixels every time, until a perfect centre was achieved?
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Offline hexagon

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #175 on: May 16, 2018, 10:43:31 AM »
If the center of the picture, which should be identical to the center of the optical system of the camera is really already below the horizon in the picture, the whole thing is useless. Don't make it so easy form them, you can do better...

So you would be happy if the experimenter mounted the camera on a frame attached to the cage, with an adjustment bracket, and took setup shots, counting the pixels every time, until a perfect centre was achieved?


Either you do the experiment as perfect as possible or you don't do it at all. As it is now, you don't even reach the point to discuss about the result, you are stuck into discussion on the realization of the experiment.

Personally I wouldn't do the experiment at all, because as I explained above, the outcome is obvious. And even if you get in the end a picture where no one can complain about the setup and the execution of the experiment, they will kill it with the simple question "how do you know that Euclidean geometry works over long distances?".

It's a useless discussion. Go and read EnaG and try to understand it. Then you will find so many obvious loopholes in the whole description that are really hard to explain.


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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #176 on: May 16, 2018, 01:27:56 PM »
See my post on page 7:

Quote from: Tom Bishop
The distance from the top of the picture to the string is 419 pixels and the distance from the bottom of the picture to the string is 485 pixels. This means the center of camera lens is below at the level of the water, looking up at it.

This suggested that the camera was looking up at the device and everything was not perfectly leveled.

....so 904 pixels in total, and the centre should be 452?

So the error is 33/904 in both directions, or 4%.

Do you consider that a significant error, in the context of the experiment?

It's not error. The alignment of the water levels is immaterial to the cube. The cube is just a platform to which the water tubes are attached for stability and unity. But if ignoring the lines of perspective, and all you care about is sighting along the water levels, it doesn't matter how the cube is oriented or whether the water levels are centered on the cube.



You don't even have to put the camera inline with the two water tubes, because you're not measuring a point. You're measuring a line. The line of the horizon. So if you extend the sight line of the level of the water laterally, you can level your eye or camera on that, as an index. You just need to get the index line right, aligned with the level of the water.



You could even turn the who thing 90degs to the sighting line. You just need a horizontal rule to make sure you are making a good judgement as to horizontal, but the point (again) isn't to actually measure the drop. It's just to see if it exists.



Tom's jellybean alignment analogy isn't germane. I'm not trying to line up the water levels with a point on the horizon. I'm trying to compare the line of the water levels with the line of the horizon.

And the tilt or centeredness of the cube has nothing to do with that. The cube doesn't come into play unless assessing the perspective lines. Then, orientation of the cube because very important and you don't want it tilted forward or backwards at all. But you can still have the water level high or low on the cube. They don't have to be dead center. You just need to get the camera at the same level. And the camera needn't be dead center, laterally, either. The lines of perspective will shift along (or parallel to) the horizon as the camera moves left or right at the same level as the water.

Camera height, relative to the water level, will change everything. Tom is absolutely right about that if that's any part of his criticism. But where the camera/water is relative to the center of the cube? No. They don't all have to be lined up even. You just need to be able to know that they are at the same level. It's a lateral, horizontal line we're after. Not a point. We're not looking for curve the way the Bedford Canal experiment did it.

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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #177 on: May 16, 2018, 01:39:01 PM »
The jellybeans in Bobby's experiment are the two water surfaces in the water device and the horizon. The camera needs to line up with the two water surfaces to see if the horizon lines up with it. The pictures Bobby has shown shows that the number of pixels between the top of the picture and the water device surfaces/white string were less than the number of pixels between the bottom of the picture and the water surfaces/white string.
Maybe you should think of my sight indices as lengths of licorice sticks instead of jellybeans. The horizon is a long one laying on it's side. And the water levels are two short ones, also laying on their sides. My camera or eye can be along another length of line anywhere behind the water level licorice sticks. I'm trying to get them to line up vertically.  (And I'm not trying to line up the horizon. I'm trying to see where the horizon ends up when I get the water levels lined up in the vertical.)

Quote from: Tom Bishop
The distance from the top of the picture to the string is 419 pixels and the distance from the bottom of the picture to the string is 485 pixels. This means the center of camera lens is below at the level of the water, looking up at it.

This suggested that the camera was looking up at the device and everything was not perfectly leveled.
[/quote]This is wrong. If the alignment of the camera is below the level of the water, the two tubes water levels will not be aligned. The orientation of the cube or how high or low they are in the picture or in relation to the cube has nothing to do with it. Count pixels between the water levels in the front tube and the rear tube. That's where you know if the camera is looking up or looking down.

The orientation of the cube and where the water level lines up on the height of the cube only comes into play when incorporating the perspective line aspect of this demo.

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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #178 on: May 16, 2018, 01:43:14 PM »
The distance from the top of the picture to the string is 419 pixels and the distance from the bottom of the picture to the string is 485 pixels. This means the center of camera lens is below at the level of the water, looking up at it.

Are you just arguing to argue?

Again, do you consider this a significant error in the experiment? It's perfectly possible for it to be within the bounds of experimental error, and still be valid.
Please don't argue with him about whether or not the error is significant.
It isn't error. He's not understanding the setup. He's thinking Bedford maybe. That's not what this is.
He's looking for precision in something that is irrelevant. I specifically did not try to manage the water level and the sighting string to be dead center inside of the cube. It doesn't have to be. That would just be for aesthetics. It has no bearing on the measurement. He's misunderstanding. (At least I hope he is, because it would upset me if he's just being intentionally distracting.)

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Offline Bobby Shafto

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Re: The Horizon is Always at Eye Level
« Reply #179 on: May 16, 2018, 01:56:15 PM »

It's a useless discussion. Go and read EnaG and try to understand it. Then you will find so many obvious loopholes in the whole description that are really hard to explain.

Maybe you're right, at least the part of adding the lines of perspective aspect. I simply do not understand what Rowbotham is talking about in those sections on perspective near the surface or at sea. He talks about perspective correctly, but then warps it in application, such that somehow lines bend. The ground plane slopes up to eye level but then stops sloping at the horizon and turns parallel. And where it does that depends on variables that are different for different things. So, where's the horizon?

Seems to me that regardless of whether the horizon for the sun is thousands of miles away while the horizon for a ship is 20 miles, they line up at eye level, right? So who cares how far away the horizon is. Is it always at eye level or not?

Who cares if my cube wires converge at different distances away from me, depending on how far away from the center of my eye they are? All I care about is if they converge on the LINE of the horizon. Which they should. Whether we're talking Euclidean or Rowbotham geometry. I don't see a disagreement. The disagreement is if that convergence is always at eye level, regardless of distance away. I don't think my approach is contrary to Rowbotham's premise. However the hell he explains things strangely in the to/from direction, it's not changing the side-to-side aspect, which is all "horizon at eye level" cares about.

It shouldn't be this confusing, but FE is trying to make it so. It's a simply proposition. "Horizon is at eye level." Is it? How does anyone know? I don't have a protractor in my neck or a clinometer in my brain. I can't tell the difference between a few degrees of tilt longways. I need to gauge it.

I think the perspective lines work and enhance the water level gauge, but if it just causes distraction, then just think of the cube as a mounting device and forget about the wires and lines of perspective.