Stepping Into Two-Dimensional Space

Before jumping into the art of video games and the science of VR, we look back to the Renaissance era for the inspiration of painting becoming more realistic as if looking at it was looking at a still life. The Renaissance was a time in which art and science couldn’t have been more intertwined. During this era artist such as Masolino da Panicale used what is know as a vanishing point to create several works that gave the illusion of depth, much like what the Rift accomplishes using stereoscopic. One of Masolino’s more well known paintings, “St. Peter Healing a Cripple and the Raising of Tabitha”, which has almost perfect convergence of the vanishing points for receding horizontals from all parts of the composition, from the front of the scene all the way to streets in the far distance.

 

Perspective is the idea of a painting, image, or even what we are looking at having a single focal point or several depending on the environment displayed, but mainly the idea of a single main focal point. In the Renaissance, painters needed to be able to translate the three-dimensional world around them onto the two-dimensional surface of a painting. The solution was “linear perspective”; the idea that converging lines meet at a single vanishing point and all shapes get smaller in all directions with increasing distance from the eye. Like seen above, using linear perspective mimics what the human eye sees at any given time. When looking at a building from the sidewalk you will only ever be able to see one or two sides of the building at any given point, depending on the size and elevation.

 

Resource to read further:

- http://www.webexhibits.org/sciartperspective/raphaelperspective1.html
- http://www.webexhibits.org/sciartperspective/perspective1.html
- http://www.renaissanceconnection.org/lesson_art_perspective.html