"sinking skyline" effect

Well I was lookin for some pics for my desktop and I stumbled across a pretty cool pic showing the 'sinking ship' effect.. well it's not really a sinking ship, it's Toronto's sinking skyline.. which is even better because now nobody can bitch and moan about how small it is b/c it's so far away and how therefore the pic is useless. Now for those of you that remember, I once started a thread where I attacked the law of perspective and many of my points were left unanswered since you FEers do what you always do best: post regurgitated and useless bullshit and then move on to another thread like the pussies you are. Do I think this is gonna be any different? Probably not, but hey.. the pic is cool, and it proves my point again. You're idiots.

Here is the skyline from about 50 km away or so, and following it is a picture taken from much closer for comparison purposes.





You'll notice how in the first picture the Skydome (now known as the Rogers Center) at the foot of the tower is completelly obscured. Now, small details like the features of the tower and the surrounding skyscrapers can still be distinguished (you can still see the rows of windows on the white skyscraper beside the tower) but that big fat stadium which is just under 300 feet tall and many of the surrounding buildings are magically hidden by the waves right? (which incidentally are subject to the same laws of perspective).. This isn't some subtle effect of something shrinking off in the distance, the effect is very distinct, especially with something as a skyline.

Anyway, I've already said why the law of perspective as used by Rowbotham is full of shit, and my rebuttals were left unchallenged. I'm not gonna bother going over it again because I've learned there's no point.. FEer's (and especially TomB's) stupidity is more boundless than the infinite plane of tundra beyond the ice wall. But I hope you enjoy the pics anyway. Cheers.

Great! I'll include these in the RE Primer as an experiment examining the challenge we already have "Tops First". Thanks!

Great photos, I would like somebody trying to photoshop all the great detail without leaving telltale marks.

These photos also give evidence to a point I made a long time ago: If some people repeated Rowbotham's experiments finding both for and against his conclusions, you just have to improve on the experiment's specifications. The basis of Rowbotham's error or fraud is the very short (10 km) distance he used for most of his experiments.

The sinking ship effect people see is a natural law of perspective. Dr. Samuel Birley Rowbotham found that the vanishing point of the horizon is slightly below the edge of the horizon due the mean combined height of the waves. Although the waves might reach a maximum of 44 inches in height above the true edge of the horizon, it has a profound effect. Since the horizon line is always at eye level with the observer at every altitude, the line of sight will intersect with the waves before the hull of the ship.

This means that as the ship shrinks into the horizon it must also sink into mean height of the combined waves located three quarters the way between the observer and the ship. The smaller the ship gets into the distance, the more the waves at the false edge of the horizon will obscure its hull.

Consider a 3D model with an infinite perfectly flat plane. Any receding object on the surface gets smaller and smaller the more distant it gets, right? Along the surface of the sea, any imperfect increase in height, no matter how minuscule, will obscure the object from the bottom up as it shrinks into the distance.

The ship will sink into an apparently solid horizon because along the last quarter of the distance between the observer and ship are hundreds of individual waves, combining and colluding in layers, creating a solid line upon which the ship can sink and shrink into as it recedes.

As an illustration, here is an image showing the horizon line at eye level effect:



Lets imagine that the bird is the observer, the strawberries are the waves, and the orange is a distant ship. The horizon line, always being at eye level by definition, will rise the land and sea to a point where the strawberries intersect with eye level, obscuring the orange. As the orange recedes and shrinks into the distance in the illustration it will be obscured by the strawberries from the bottom up.

To cement the idea that the horizon is alway at eye level with the observer, here is an excerpt from the Perspective Handbook:

Horizon line and Eye level

Anyone who has ever been to the seaside will have seen a horizon (as long as it wasn't foggy). This is the line you see far away, out to sea. It's the line where the water stops and the sky starts. There are horizon lines everywhere, but usually you don't see them because something like a hill or a tree or a house is in the way.

You always see the horizon line at your eye level. In fact, if you change your eye level (by standing up, or sitting down) the horizon line changes too, and follows your eye level. Your eye level always follows you around everywhere because it's your eye level. If you sit on the floor the horizon is at your eye level. If you stand up, it's at your eye level. If you stand on top of a very tall building, or look out of the window of an aeroplane, the horizon is still at your eye level. It's only everything else that appears to change in relation to your eye level. The fact is, that everything looks the way it does from your point of view because you see it in relation to yourself. So if you are sitting looking out of the window of an airliner everything is going to look shorter than you because at this moment you are taller (or higher) than everything else.

What?!  How come the second bird is on a flat plane, with this huge slant of strawberries infront of him?  Shouldn't the bird be on a slant with the strawberries (which would then have the same outcome of the first bird)?

Oh me goodness! Toronto under water! Ice wall melting! We all doomed!

Tom you made that arguement last time his topic came up; it was destroyed. Pleae refrain from repeating false arguements.

See Wave Crests and Sunsets; the last post Tom made and the many replies.

See Wave Crests and Sunsets; the last post Tom made and the many replies.

Ahh, people saying exactly what I was thinking.  And the start of theroundearthsociety.org is there

See Wave Crests and Sunsets; the last post Tom made and the many replies.

I've said the same exact thing in the Wave Crests and Sunsets thread. Misunderstandings come from the inability to visualize that the line of the horizon is alway at eye level with the observer, 90 degrees parallel. The next time you visit the beach look directly straight ahead towards the ocean. The line of the horizon will be exactly at eye level, shifting higher or lower as you shift.

As you climb a hill, the horizon line changes and follows your eye level.

Since the surface of the earth ascends to eye level, imperfections of the earth's surface three quarters of the way across will intersect with the observer's line of sight. This is illustrated in my previous post.

What?!  How come the second bird is on a flat plane, with this huge slant of strawberries infront of him?  Shouldn't the bird be on a slant with the strawberries (which would then have the same outcome of the first bird)?

The bird in the illustration is looking directly ahead. The waves have risen to a point where they can block a distant objects from the bottom up as it recedes and shrinks into the distance.

The slant occurs because when looking 90 degrees parallel across the surface of the earth the horizon seems to ascend in altitude until it ends at eye level. The line of the horizon is at eye level from a beach, a mountain, or a plane. If you study your surroundings closely, you will find this to be true; the world around you is concave instead of convex.

As a demonstration, start up a 3D shoot-em-up and load a very large flat map. Center your crosshair on the line of the horizon and turn on no clip. Begin to ascend in altitude and observe the line of the horizon rise with the crosshair, staying exactly centered. The line of the horizon will stay centered with eye level as you ascend in altitude until you have run out of land to observe.

Quote

See Wave Crests and Sunsets; the last post Tom made and the many replies.

I've said the same exact thing in the Wave Crests and Sunsets thread. Misunderstandings come from the inability to visualize that the line of the horizon is alway at eye level with the observer, 90 degrees parallel. The next time you visit the beach and look directly straight ahead towards the ocean. The line of the horizon ill be exactly at eye level, shifting higher or lower as you shift.

As you climb a hill, the horizon line changes and follows your eye level.

Since the surface of the earth ascends to eye level, imperfections of the earth's surface three quarters of the way across will intersect with the observer's line of sight. This is illustrated in my previous post.

Quote

What?!  How come the second bird is on a flat plane, with this huge slant of strawberries infront of him?  Shouldn't the bird be on a slant with the strawberries (which would then have the same outcome of the first bird)?

The slant occurs because when looking 90 degrees parallel across the surface of the earth the horizon seems to ascend in altitude until it ends at eye level. The line of the horizon is at eye level from a beach, a mountain, or a plane. If you study your surroundings closely, you will find this to be true; the world around you is concave instead of convex.

As a demonstration, start up a 3D shoot-em-up and load a very large flat map. Center your crosshair on the line of the horizon and turn on no clip. Begin to ascend in altitude and observe the line of the horizon rise with the crosshair, staying exactly centered. The line of the horizon will stay centered with eye level as you ascend in altitude until you have run out of land to observe.

Please explain the reason that if we threw you down a 100 foot well, you would no longer see the horizon at eye level.

Please explain the reason that if we threw you down a 100 foot well, you would no longer see the horizon at eye level.

The horizon line is still at eye level 100 feet below sea level.

See: Death Valley, USA

Quote

See Wave Crests and Sunsets; the last post Tom made and the many replies.

I've said the same exact thing in the Wave Crests and Sunsets thread. Misunderstandings come from the inability to visualize that the line of the horizon is alway at eye level with the observer, 90 degrees parallel. The next time you visit the beach and look directly straight ahead towards the ocean. The line of the horizon ill be exactly at eye level, shifting higher or lower as you shift.

As you climb a hill, the horizon line changes and follows your eye level.

Since the surface of the earth ascends to eye level, imperfections of the earth's surface three quarters of the way across will intersect with the observer's line of sight. This is illustrated in my previous post.

Quote

What?!  How come the second bird is on a flat plane, with this huge slant of strawberries infront of him?  Shouldn't the bird be on a slant with the strawberries (which would then have the same outcome of the first bird)?

The bird in the illustration is looking directly ahead. The waves have risen to a point where they can block a distant objects from the bottom up as it recedes and shrinks into the distance.

The slant occurs because when looking 90 degrees parallel across the surface of the earth the horizon seems to ascend in altitude until it ends at eye level. The line of the horizon is at eye level from a beach, a mountain, or a plane. If you study your surroundings closely, you will find this to be true; the world around you is concave instead of convex.

As a demonstration, start up a 3D shoot-em-up and load a very large flat map. Center your crosshair on the line of the horizon and turn on no clip. Begin to ascend in altitude and observe the line of the horizon rise with the crosshair, staying exactly centered. The line of the horizon will stay centered with eye level as you ascend in altitude until you have run out of land to observe.

You needed to type all this to explain the picture.  I can do it in one sentence
The earth is round. 

The earth is round.

It looks pretty flat to me. 

...
To cement the idea that the horizon is alway at eye level with the observer, here is an excerpt from the Perspective Handbook:

Horizon line and Eye level

Anyone who has ever been to the seaside will have seen a horizon (as long as it wasn't foggy). This is the line you see far away, out to sea. It's the line where the water stops and the sky starts. There are horizon lines everywhere, but usually you don't see them because something like a hill or a tree or a house is in the way.

You always see the horizon line at your eye level. In fact, if you change your eye level (by standing up, or sitting down) the horizon line changes too, and follows your eye level. Your eye level always follows you around everywhere because it's your eye level. If you sit on the floor the horizon is at your eye level. If you stand up, it's at your eye level. If you stand on top of a very tall building, or look out of the window of an aeroplane, the horizon is still at your eye level. It's only everything else that appears to change in relation to your eye level. The fact is, that everything looks the way it does from your point of view because you see it in relation to yourself. So if you are sitting looking out of the window of an airliner everything is going to look shorter than you because at this moment you are taller (or higher) than everything else.

I checked. There is no text called "Perspective Handbook" in print. TomB lies again.

Quote

Please explain the reason that if we threw you down a 100 foot well, you would no longer see the horizon at eye level.

The horizon line is still at eye level 100 feet below sea level.

See: Death Valley, USA

You haven't answered my challenge. When you're 100 feet down a narrow well with only a small circle of sunlight directly overhead, the horizon is not at eye level. When you're 100 miles above the Earth, the horizon is not at eye level. You're just plain wrong, again.

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The earth is round.

It looks pretty flat to me. 

Looks can be deceiving.  
So let me get this straight.  Water follows the horizon law but the city does not?  Face it, no matter how much vanishing point horizon stuff you try and post, it still doesn't cover why the city looks like its behind the horizon.  

Please explain the reason that if we threw you down a 100 foot well, you would no longer see the horizon at eye level.

Wishful thinking? 

Quote from: Gulliver on July 02, 2007, 09:47:42 AM

Please explain the reason that if we threw you down a 100 foot well, you would no longer see the horizon at eye level.

Wishful thinking? 

Would that make it a 'wishing well'? 

The Perspective Handbook that Tom describes does indeed exist. However, it is a DRAWING handbook. People don't typically draw things at say 50km above the earth's surface. Yes, up to a certain height, the change in the horizon is so miniscule that you may well consider it to be at exactly 90 degrees all the time (the earth is what we call really big!). It is a good enough approximation for drawing. However after a certain height those miniscule changes translate into a horizon line that is noticeably below eye level. However this would not be relevant for a perspective DRAWING handbook now would it? Since I very much doubt that the book was designed to teach students how to accuratelly draw a landscape from 50 or 100 km up. Your source is really not relevant to the discussion at hand.

Now to adress your drawing 'with perspective'. You show yourself to be an idiot once again.. or a liar. I love how neither the strawberries nor the ball change in size in your drawing, when in fact they should BECAUSE THEY ARE SUBJECT TO THE SAME RULES OF PERSPECTIVE! I've told you this 1000 times and you always ignore it. Here's a corrected picture:



This is something that I've seen Rowbotham conveniently ignore in his diagrams as well. If you're going to increase the slant of the ground as you do (in order to show the ground 'rising' to meet the observer's eye line) then you also have to account for the fact that objects along the ground are subject to the same laws of perspective (i.e. they appear smaller the farther away they are.

The Perspective Handbook that Tom describes does indeed exist. However, it is a DRAWING handbook. ...

Reference please. I suspect that you have the title wrong.

Quote from: Tom Bishop on July 02, 2007, 10:31:15 AM

Quote

The earth is round.

It looks pretty flat to me. 

Looks can be deceiving. 
So let me get this straight.  Water follows the horizon law but the city does not?  Face it, no matter how much vanishing point horizon stuff you try and post, it still doesn't cover why the city looks like its behind the horizon. 

The city does follow the perspective law.  It doesn't appear slanting because you only see vertical dimensions, not the horizontal ones.

Quote from: sokarul on July 02, 2007, 10:36:36 AM

Quote from: Tom Bishop on July 02, 2007, 10:31:15 AM

Quote

The earth is round.

It looks pretty flat to me. 

Looks can be deceiving. 
So let me get this straight.  Water follows the horizon law but the city does not?  Face it, no matter how much vanishing point horizon stuff you try and post, it still doesn't cover why the city looks like its behind the horizon. 

The city does follow the perspective law.  It doesn't appear slanting because you only see vertical dimensions, not the horizontal ones.

You know I can never tell when you're being sarcastic as opposed to stupid. I guess I'll just have to ignore your posts until we can tell.

You know I can never tell when you're being sarcastic as opposed to stupid. I guess I'll just have to ignore your posts until we can tell.

I think it's both about 95% of the time.

Quote from: Gulliver on July 02, 2007, 11:26:25 AM

You know I can never tell when you're being sarcastic as opposed to stupid. I guess I'll just have to ignore your posts until we can tell.

I think it's both about 95% of the time.

touche

Quote from: slappy on July 02, 2007, 11:01:08 AM

The Perspective Handbook that Tom describes does indeed exist. However, it is a DRAWING handbook. ...

Reference please. I suspect that you have the title wrong.

This is the book I believe he is referring to:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=Am7FPeFo1ycC&pg=PA7&ots=COmLUcC62g&dq=perspective+handbook&sig=Uz7bmoKrIadS_5v31y9UgzoX9xg#PPA5,M1

The reason for this being is that I do remember him using the title "Perspective Drawing Handbook" on other occasions. My point is, I could well see why a perspective drawing handbook would state that the horizon is always at eye level. For most situations this is a good enough approximation, even if not entirely true. But he's misusing the source by applying it to a flat earth debate. Regardless, the corrected diagram i posted was meant to be main point of my post.

Quote from: Gulliver on July 02, 2007, 11:04:37 AM

Quote from: slappy on July 02, 2007, 11:01:08 AM

The Perspective Handbook that Tom describes does indeed exist. However, it is a DRAWING handbook. ...

Reference please. I suspect that you have the title wrong.

This is the book I believe he is referring to:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=Am7FPeFo1ycC&pg=PA7&ots=COmLUcC62g&dq=perspective+handbook&sig=Uz7bmoKrIadS_5v31y9UgzoX9xg#PPA5,M1

The reason for this being is that I do remember him using the title "Perspective Drawing Handbook" on other occasions. My point is, I could well see why a perspective drawing handbook would state that the horizon is always at eye level. For most situations this is a good enough approximation, even if not entirely true. But he's misusing the source by applying it to a flat earth debate. Regardless, the corrected diagram i posted was meant to be main point of my post.

Well said. And thanks for correcting TomB on the title. I have to wonder whether he can get anything right these days.

Now to adress your drawing 'with perspective'. You show yourself to be an idiot once again.. or a liar. I love how neither the strawberries nor the ball change in size in your drawing, when in fact they should BECAUSE THEY ARE SUBJECT TO THE SAME RULES OF PERSPECTIVE! I've told you this 1000 times and you always ignore it. Here's a corrected picture:

The strawberries nor ball change size in the illustration I've presented on page one because it is a side view without the shrinking element of distance. It is meant as a general overview of how the perspective effect looks from a side view, not from the view of the bird.

Your "corrected image" is incorrect. While the strawberries and orange do indeed get smaller as they recede from the bird's point of view, they stay proportional to one another. In my original image the last strawberry was more than 1/2 the hight of the orange. In your corrected image you've shrunk the strawberry to 1/6th the height of the orange. This is incorrect. You have shrunk the strawberries too much, out of proportion to the orange.

This would be the corrected image:



I've used the "perspective" tool in Gimp to apply the correct shrinking effect to the right hand side of the image. The strawberries at the end now stay proportional to the orange in size, and bunch up as they approach the horizon line as would the waves on the surface of the ocean.

However, even with your overly-shrunken strawberries, the orange will still be able to recede and shrink into an area of strawberries which breaches the line of sight.

We can tell that no matter how much we shrink the strawberries and orange, there will always be a section where the minuscule hight discrepancies along the surface block the line of sight, which the receding orange can shrink and recede into.

No matter how small the the imperfections are, no matter if level of the sea increases by only one inch or centimeter, the increased height will block all objects beyond it, giving a receding object an area upon which it can recede and shrink into. There is always "stuff" on the horizon, be it on land or sea. No stretch of land or sea is perfectly flat. There will always be an increase in height receding objects can recede and shrink into.

Even a grain of sand could block the hull of a ship.

As an analogy lets take out a penny and align it with the sun on any given day. Miraculously, perspective allows the penny blocks out the entire sun. There we see that a small area could very easily block out a bigger area. So therefore, a small increase in height along the surface of the sea could very well block all of down town Toronto, as shown in your telescopic image on page one.

Quote

Now to adress your drawing 'with perspective'. You show yourself to be an idiot once again.. or a liar. I love how neither the strawberries nor the ball change in size in your drawing, when in fact they should BECAUSE THEY ARE SUBJECT TO THE SAME RULES OF PERSPECTIVE! I've told you this 1000 times and you always ignore it. Here's a corrected picture:

The strawberries nor ball change size in the illustration I've presented on page one because it is a side view without the shrinking element of distance. It is meant as a general overview of how the perspective effect looks from a side view, not from the view of the bird.

Your "corrected image" is incorrect. While the strawberries and orange do indeed get smaller as they recede from the bird's point of view, they stay proportional to one another. In my original image the last strawberry was more than 1/2 the hight of the orange. In your corrected image you've shrunk the strawberry to 1/6th the height of the orange. This is incorrect. You have shrunk the strawberries too much, out of proportion to the orange.

This would be the corrected image:



I've used the "perspective" tool in Gimp to apply the correct shrinking effect to the right hand side of the image. The strawberries now stay proportional to the orange in size, and bunch up as they approach the horizon line as would the waves on the surface of the ocean.

We can tell that no matter how much we shrink the orange, there will always be a section where the minuscule hight discrepancies along the surface block the line of sight, which the receding ship/orange can shrink and recede into.

No matter how small the the imperfections are, no matter if level of the sea increases by only one centimeter, it will block all objects beyond it, giving the object an area upon which it can recede and shrink into. There is always "stuff" on the horizon, be it on land or sea. No stretch of land or sea is perfectly flat. There will always be an increase in height receding objects can recede and shrink into.

Even a grain of sand could block the hull of a ship.

Show the math.

Tom, do you think the earth is flat, or "wok" shaped?

Show the math.

Zero math is necessary for understanding. Just basic logic.

• If the horizon line is at eye level,
• If there are imperfections along the sea level of the earth,
• Then there will be an area along the surface of the sea which receding objects can shrink and recede into.

Even in Slappys "corrected image" the strawberries will still breach the line of sight if extended further, allowing the orange to recede and shrink into the apparent horizon.