Visual Plane
every picture states the point it is correct from
Concept

Moving viewpoint — where it appears

4 essays name this object, across one field. What follows is each of them, and the objects they name alongside it.
the eye's trackthe eye at x = -10.5 mevery point is drawn by the one position of the eye that is level with itplan — the eye's track and the scans it makes28 m of travel

A scroll is a camera that moves

A Chinese handscroll is not a picture with a wandering viewpoint or a picture with no viewpoint. It is the image of an eye that travels along a track and records one vertical line at a time, and that object has an exact geometry — orthographic along the roll, perspective across it.

scroll · pushbroom a receding straight line, and the chord it is not9.59 px of sagthe control — the same line at constant depth0e+0 pxno single viewpoint — the rays miss by 6.1 ma straight line's image is a hyperbola

A straight line in a scroll is a hyperbola

Under a pushbroom the image of a straight world line is a Möbius function of the paper coordinate, which is a rectangular hyperbola. It is straight exactly when the line holds its depth — so a curve in a handscroll is a depth signal rather than a stylistic one, and the sag is computable in pixels.

scroll · pushbroom the best point, missed by 8.57 m27 m of the eye's trackno single viewpoint — the rays miss by 8.57 mthe eyes are a track, not a point

The centre a scroll does not have

Fit a common point to the rays of one section of a handscroll and it misses by metres. The miss is not a residual to be tightened — it is exactly the standard deviation of the eye's own track, it grows linearly with how much is unrolled, and it goes to zero only for a section of no width.

scroll · pushbroom a rotating eye — the panorama2e-15 ma projectiona translating eye — the scroll7.97 mnot oneboth of these draw a straight world line as a curverms miss of the least-squares centreone of them is a projection

A scroll is not a panorama

Both draw straight world lines as curves, and one of them is a projection. A rotating eye keeps its centre exactly however far it turns; a translating eye has none at all. Curvature and centrelessness are independent properties, and conflating them is the standard mistake about both objects.

scroll · panorama

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

HandscrollPushbroomStation pointcentre of projectionCylindrical projectionDemonstrationForeshorteningPicture surfacepoint at infinityConicEquirectangularFocal length

All concepts