2 dimensions + 1 dimensions

As an artist, I am always trying to make things that people understand. And a fundamental factor in figuring out what people understand is knowing how the human brain can think. And the specific aspect I want to explore in this post is how we think about space.

I think the common conception of human understanding of space is that we can fundamentally understand 3d space. I think this is not the case, and if it is used in any way as a basis for design, the outcome will be marred by it.

Just to clarify, when I say "understand" 3d space, I roughly mean the ability to grasp an objects design in its totality at once in 3d. The ability to make decisions and answer questions about the object.

Now, on to what I think is the how the human brain can work.

We have the ability to comprehend 2d + 1d, in which the 1 dimension is of a greatly reduced precision, and can't be easily related to the other 2 dimensions.

A simple example of this is when you are looking at any regular scene. You can easily see how all the objects are composed in the planar 2 dimensional surface that is your vision. You can see how things line up. You can compare sizes. You can easily track movement with accuracy. You can count lots of object. You can tell an awful lot about what is going on in 2 dimensions. But then there is the third dimension. Even without 2 eyes, or when looking at a picture you can discern depth, yet this information is only accessible because your brain is taking the 2d information and giving you the depth information back with much less precision.

Yet, this can't be true, as I'm sure many people are sure they can imagine 3d objects in their mind. I would argue that this is actually a matter of joining together two or more 2d+1d conceptions. They fit together so nicely that you never notice that it isn't actually 3d.

Where did I start thinking about this? Halo. As a player you can only ever see a 2d view of the game on the screen, yet you need a 3d conception of the space. So in terms of aiming and shooting at other players, that is easily achieved with the 2d space of the screen, and a little bit of 1d knowledge when you throw things like grenade which are distance related(grenades are really tricky because you need to rely on a 1d rough estimate). As for the map knowledge, I always felt it was stored in my brain as 2d top down views with 1d knowledge serving simply as gross differences such as different levels of a building.

So why is this so important? Well for one thing it explains why 2d games are so successful. We can actually easily understand them. 3d games are just a complicated addition that make the process of understand much more difficult, it is not really a natural leap that our brains can make.

It is also important in making art. As depth is very rough, it can be exaggerate or wrong and nobody can really tell. It also means that 3d movies probably aren't the future. They add a little bit of value to the film, but it is an incremental change, nothing that will change the industry.

Kyler