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3D VISUALIZATION
Farewell to the ‘Paralyzed Cyclops’

By Christine Evans-Pughe

Could the principles of medieval art radically improve how we interact with computer-
generated images? The founders of U.K. technology startup Fovotec think so, and big
players in 3D graphics are taking notice.

ix hundred years ago, Italian Renaissance artists Filippo Europe. “This is the difference between what humans and cameras see.”
Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti tore up the art rule book Pepperell and Burleigh have spent the past 10 years reverse-
with a revolutionary approach to depicting 3D objects. Called engineering art to better understand how human eyes and brains
Slinear perspective, it was so successful that even today, it’s how interpret images and objects.
computers display 3D scenes and images. FovoRender alters Through their startup,
Linear perspective geometrically sizes objects relative to each other Fovotec, they’ve turned these
according to their distance from an imagined observer. It’s based on images on screens to findings into patented algo-
the physics of light through a pinhole. As objects in a scene recede in rithms, called FovoRender,
depth, they shrink in size, just as we see in photographs. replicate human visual that alter the images we see
But despite wide cultural acceptance, linear perspective is like having perception, which could on screens to replicate human
blinkers on. Artist David Hockney has called it “the point of view of a visual perception. They think
paralyzed cyclops.” change the way we their approach could revolu-
Our natural binocular vision extends 180˚ horizontally. Linear per- tionize the way we interact
spective images only look natural to us in the middle 50˚, as if looking interact with screens, with screens, social media,
through a window. As the field of view widens, the depth shrinkage of social media, and more. architectural design, games
objects drawn in this way becomes more extreme, and objects at the and more.
margins of the image appear stretched. FovoRender is based on
Even in that middle 50˚ sweet spot, linear perspective doesn’t match optical principles used in medieval religious paintings. As Pepperell
with how we really see the world, according to Robert Pepperell and and Burleigh have shown in a recent academic paper with psycholo-
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Alistair Burleigh from the Cardiff School of Art and Design at Cardiff gist Nicole Ruta, medieval artists directed attention toward the most
Metropolitan University. “Many people have tried to photograph a prominent people in a scene by enlarging them. In this way, they found
huge full moon and been disappointed by the little fuzzy disc they see they could emotionally engage the viewer by letting them assume the
on their screen,” Pepperell explained in an interview with EE Times central subject’s point of view.

Image of a car interior using trial integration of FovoRender for Intel OSPRay (Source: Fovotec)

MARCH 2023 | www.eetimes.eu