Linear perspective is a comprehensive method of representing 3D objects on a 2D plane, just like how a game appears on your game monitor (open in new tab). It encompasses the one-, two-, and three-point perspective that you may have learned in school, and has been the primary perspective method in art since it was invented in the 15th century.

Now Robert Pepperell of Cardiff Metropolitan University in Wales (via New Scientist (opens in new tab)) is questioning everything we understand about how perspective is represented in video games.

The current standard of linear perspective was developed by architect, poet, and humanist Leon Battista Alberti. Widely regarded as the father of the early Renaissance in the art world, Alberti popularized the technique of linear perspective, which is still used today by architects and artists (including game artists) to express the accuracy and realism of a scene.

The alternative is a single vanishing point in one-point perspective and two points in two-point perspective.

An alternative is nonlinear perspective, which relies on atmospheric cues to convey depth, volume, and location. This is more common in expressionist works because it emphasizes importance over anatomical correctness.

Nonlinear perspectives are not new to video games either. Your first exposure to nonlinear graphical projection (open in new tab) may have been curved perspective when you discovered the freaky fish-eye cheat in The Sims. Many games also use stylized perspective, distorting traditional linear perspective to make things look super trippy. It's a game, it doesn't have to look realistic.

Pepperell and co-workers at Cardiff Metropolitan University have found that a non-linear perspective may be useful when it comes to games. Specifically, they were able to use mathematical models to develop new software (opens in new tab) that can adjust a game's perspective to mimic how the brain actually sees a scene.

The end result is to make the scene more in tune with the way our brains perceive light hitting our curved retinas, something that linear perspective cannot capture at all.

Using screenshots from the action game Hammer 2 (open in new tab), Pepperell staff presented just under 200 participants with two different perspectives (the original and a more natural perspective modified by their software) and asked them to guess the distance of a blue They were asked to guess the distance of the ball.

They were tested in a variety of formats and with a variety of views, and had to answer multiple-choice each time for 72 different images.

The study showed that people had problems overestimating with standard linear perspective, whereas natural perspective made it slightly easier to judge distances, especially when the field of view was wide.

Pepperell's work has turned heads at the start-up company FovoTec (opens in new tab). The top page claims that the software can provide "a much wider field of view and a more accurate sense of depth, space, and motion."

In other words, if you've tried to use a wider field of view in your games with a hyper-curved wide-angle monitor but had problems with perspective, Pepperell may have just found one impressive solution. It would also make first-person games more realistic and immersive.

This study correlates with the work of Chiara Saracini of Maure Catholic University (open in new tab). Nevertheless, she wonders if this is the definitive answer to our FOV woes, as it is still quite over-estimated. Still, things can only get better from here.