On 26-4-2010 14:49, Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>>> Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?
>>> At risk of entirely misunderstanding the question, all cinemas have shown all
>>> films in 16:9 or wider for almost a hundred years.
> 
>> Really?
> 
>> Huh, well, you learn something every day. The picture always looked 
>> fairly square to me...
> 
>   I'm beginning to suspect that this is not Andrew, and instead some troll
> is posting using his nickname.
> 
>   If even TV is not square (it's 4:3), how in the world could you ever
> think that movies are square? I don't get it.
> 
>   The narrowest aspect ratio used in movies for the past 20+ years has
> usually been 1.85:1. The most common aspect ratios for big movies today
> is 2.25:1 and even 2.35:1 (that's well over twice as wide as tall).
> 
a few days ago I heard a talk that might provide an explanation. Someone 
set up an experiment with 180 degrees view and figured out how wide they 
perceived it. You get a camel distribution with one hump at 180 and 
another, larger! one at 90. Experiment was reproducable per person.

Hard to believe but apparently true. Something fishy in our brain. Jan 
Koenderink, who was giving the talk, is trying to figure out why.

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