Perception in SL: Study of Depth of Field

Following conversations for the past several years concerning settings really had me wondering how people in SL see the same exact thing. Everything has to do with perception and visualization and in a virtual world it depends on what machine you run, the hardware settings etc...

In a virtual realm it is difficult to compete with RL perceptions. I showed a picture to someone in RL a photo of an regular object one would find in RL. They easily pointed out that it was a virtual photo but when I showed someone else the same photo with all the settings thrown in ultra they saw nothing strange with the photo... nothing different from what they would expect to see in RL that includes shadow, depth and a broader range of things we take for granted in the RL.

Always being stuck in a skybox I never had the focus to appreciate the world through different views. I was stuck in my 'settings' and had not even tried shadows but when I did... SL became a different world altogether.

Study of Depth of Field in SecondLife

Without Depth of Field

With Depth of Field

Background noise in photography. The best way to see it is obviously self portraits. Here I am standing somewhere with a lot of background noise in the photo so one can really understand the concept.

Without Depth of Field

With Depth of Field

Although sometimes we want to bash SL upside the head, regions go down etc. etc... it is a gorgeous game. LL has spent a great deal of time with the latest visualization that SL is capable of. Yes it means using a higher performance machine but as you can see from above, sometimes you and I see the same things in a completely different way.

Photos taken in Steelhead Nevermoor.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Steelhead%20Nevermoor/42/17/27