Parallax scrolling

Under motion parallax is understood in the psychology of perception the effect of the optical results when different objects are distributed differently from each other in a landscape and the observer moves parallel to these objects sideways while looking towards the horizon.

Principle

The light pattern of nearby objects move faster in this case over the retina than the more remote objects. This effect occurs, for example, when you look out the side window of a moving car or train.

The result is that those objects that are close to the viewer to move faster than the remote far from the viewer. The movement of objects is approximated to zero, the closer they are to the horizon, which moves only minimally ( depending on the overall speed ).

However, there is a widespread misconception that our brains can win over the retina of the eye from the information on different moving speeds of the objects, the objects that are further away than others. This information can be obtained allegedly in the interest of depth perception. In one experiment, however, Deborah Wheeler and Irvin rock could demonstrate that Bewegungsparallaxen are not used by the brain in reality for depth perception, although it would be possible in theory.

Example

In the picture, especially the perception of spatial depth by masking helps us to recognize a spatial arrangement. The blades of grass and palm trees obscure part of the mountains, which in turn cover the moon partially. However, we can not make a statement about how far exactly because the objects are from each other, although the different speeds give us a clue. However, one can say with certainty that the moon, the spatial extent of the mountains is at least far from the palm trees. Would the moon so high in the night sky that it is covered neither by the mountains, even from the palm trees, we would get the feeling that somewhere this could hover over the mountains and moves us in the same speed. In this case, our experience would help us simply assess that the moon is usually much farther away from us than the mountain range, and therefore lots must be farther away.

More depth perception characteristics

More depth perception characteristics of the environment exist in textures of objects that appear smaller the further away an object is from the viewer (example: Paving stones in a pedestrian area - the cobblestone pattern will appear smaller the farther the road section in question is away from the viewer ). Also " vanishing points " as they are used deliberately in pictures to represent plasticity can, the brain serve as evidence of spatial depth. Modern psychology is based on the assumption that complex objects and environmental stimuli are first broken down into individual components from the sensory apparatus of perception and then re-assembled into complex sensory perceptions.

History

As at the beginning of the 19th century, the railroad was so far advanced in the course of industrialization in Western countries, that she was a general population are available, the passengers could spend hours lead the parallax effect to heart by directed their view outside. It was said at this point the panoramic views.

Motion parallax in video games

A particular significance of the motion parallax comes to the so-called side-scroller games and especially the shoot 'em up. In these games, the player controls a character or a space ship over a moving background. The parallax effect, in which the foreground objects move faster than objects in the background, is used to suggest the player a "deeper " world, but also to orientation points to offer.

From a technical perspective this is what the following 4 methods:

• Layer method
• Sprite method
• Repetitive patterns / animations
• Grid method

Example

The three levels in the following animation move at different speeds to the left. It takes its speed from the front to the back, giving the impression of depth is awakened. The ground level moves 8x faster than the vegetation level, the vegetation level moves twice as fast as the cloud level.

Vegetation level - middle

Ground level - Front

Animation (click to play)

Motion parallax in web design

The Internet can be found at the end of 2008 Bewegungsparallaxen on websites, according to Google Trends from 2011 with increasing frequency. 2013 began, the U.S. group Nike a one of the first big companies Parallax Scrolling. HTML 5 and CSS 3 favor this style.