In this screenshot of game-play from the video game Call of
Duty 4, from Infinity Ward and Activision, many depth cues allow the viewer’s
mind to know that this image is of a 3-dimmensional space instead of a flat
2-dimmensional picture. The most outright cue is overlap, also referred to as
interposition or occlusion, which is when one object blocks a portion of
another object from sight, showing that the first object is closer in depth to
the viewer than the objects it blocks. This can be seen most prominently in the
overlap of the gun over the soldiers, trees, grass, and ground, but it can also
be seen in the overlap of the trees and the helicopter and the trees and
helicopter with the mountain. The second most prominent cue is relative size:
when two objects that the viewer knows are the same size appear as different
sizes depending on their depth from each other. An example is when a light post
in a picture appears extremely large while another light post appears as a
fraction of the size it means that the larger post is closer while the smaller
post is further from the viewer. This cue can be seen in the sizes of the
soldiers and trees, the closer they are to the viewer the bigger they seem,
while the further away they are the smaller they seem. The third most prominent
is texture gradient, which is when the viewer can see the fine details of
objects that are close in depth, but the further an object is the more obscure
the fine details become. This cue can be seen in the grass and tree branches of
the screenshot. The clumps of grass that are close to the viewer can be seen as
being composed of long blades of grass while the ones further away are clumps
of similar, grass-like, colors. The same happens with the tree branches, the
needles of the trees can be seen on the closer tree branches, but as they
become further from the viewer they turn more into clumps of green with small
partings where the sky is visible through and shading that shows the branches
are at different depths even when they are so close to each.
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