How tall does something appear at a distance

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. MvG MvG 37k 7 7 gold badges 71 71 silver badges bronze badges. I spent a while thinking about the problem and trying to determine "how big an object is at feet" but you can't have something be, for example, 4 inches at a distance of 0 feet because it all mattered how far the 4 inches away was first.. I was curious about this because I wanted to know if a video game was using a different angular size visual size than real life in order to make it harder to use something like a bow and arrow beyond feet.

The former needs some reputation, but the latter can be done once you are stisfied with an answer to one of your questions. You can still switch that check mark if a better answer turns up. They don't have a built-in angular size per se, and the developers might have different ideas of your placement than yourself.

But for most games they likely face a compromise: allow users to look around a bit, even though a monitor covers only a rather small fraction of the visual field.

Drusilla Wilkins Drusilla Wilkins 1. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Calculating appearance of size of object at given distance Ask Question. Asked 7 years, 3 months ago.

Active 7 years, 3 months ago. Viewed 3k times. Thanks in advance for your help. John K. The reason things appear smaller at a distance is because our eyes cannot directly measure length. There isn't a way for your eye to place a yardstick next to objects you see and see how long it is.

Even if there was, you'd only be able to see things that were at most as large as your pupil. What your eye can measure, though, is how large an angle is subtended by two parts of an image, which thanks to the geometry of optics, doesn't change significantly from the real world to the image in your retina.

So your brain takes that information, along with a reference chart for "normal sizes" of objects and computations of parallax and perspective, and deduces the size and distance of the object. Because the resulting apparent size is based on a number of assumptions and deductions, it's fairly easy to trick the brain into thinking something is a different size or distance or even shape! Optical illusions all work by exploiting either the assumptions or processes of perception.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Best wishes! Important Disclaimer: Answers and comments provided on Google Answers are general information, and are not intended to substitute for informed professional medical, psychiatric, psychological, tax, legal, investment, accounting, or other professional advice.

Google does not endorse, and expressly disclaims liability for any product, manufacturer, distributor, service or service provider mentioned or any opinion expressed in answers or comments.