On 27-4-2010 14:07, Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> And lo On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:01:41 +0200, andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> 
> did spake thusly:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> Perhaps something similar to line perception where we overestimate acute 
> angles and underestimate obtuse ones.
> 
Is that also wildly variable between people? (I wouldn't know, because I 
am only one person)

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