I responded to a post which, it seemed to me, was the old "boats don't really go over the horizon, you can restore them with optical zoom"
You did. You also completely failed to address it
I addressed it by showing examples where you CAN'T restore them with optical zoom. The second of them is from a timelapse where you can clearly see boats sinking below and emerging from the horizon. It addresses his claim that you can 'bring those "boats gone over the curve" back into view'. You can't. If they've gone behind something (whether that something is the curve of the earth, waves or something else isn't relevant) then you cannot restore them with optical zoom.
The claim that distant things which you can't see with the naked eye can be seen with optical zoom isn't really controversial. Anyone who has mastered object permanence knows that they're not actually gone. I did actually do an "experiment" (not sure this really deserves that word) some time ago where I drew a "boat" with a thin hull and took photos of it from across the room without zoom and then zoomed in
Does that satisfy your request to "compare 2 levels of optical zoom for the same scene"?
And in the zoomed in picture the hull has been "restored". Except...I don't even think I'd used that word. It just wasn't visible from across the room, but optical zoom made it visible again. BUT...and this is the point I made in the previous thread, the hull is at the
top, so that doesn't explain the sinking ship effect. All it shows is that when objects are too small to see with the naked eye but you have clear line of sight to them you can see them by zooming in. Which I don't think is an astonishing revelation to anyone. But it isn't anything to do with the sinking ship effect either.
Obviously I adapt to new information
if I'm convinced that the new information is valid. We've been through examples before where I have.
You either have it saved somewhere
It's that. But fair enough it's not the best example. Will find some better ones.
The base of the wave is roughly around here
I'm not sure that everything above that line is one big wave but even if it is, or it is waves obscuring the boat (which I admit is plausible), it doesn't change the fact that that ship can't be restored with optical zoom. Whether it's hidden below the curve or a big wave isn't really that relevant. It's the claim of restoration I was addressing. I see Dual1ty is now talking about mirages - which is surely a contraction to his previous post and given the viewer height of 2 inches in his video I'm sure you can see why that's not a great argument either.
I continue to be interested by your claim that the sinking ship effect is "one of the most elegant proofs of FE out there". Especially given other FE claims that the effect doesn't exist at all. How does the effect prove FE in your view? On a FE I'd expect to be able to see over the top of any wave if my viewer height is higher than the highest wave. If my viewer height is the same as the highest wave then this would be the situation:
It would only hide as much of the building as the height of the wave. So waves aren't an explanation for the Turning Torso video where at greater distances more of the building is hidden. The viewer height looks to be above the height of any waves or swells across a pretty calm channel.