Human Eye's Oscillation Rate Determines Smooth Frame Rate

jones_supa writes: It should be safe to conclude that humans can see frame rates greater than 24 fps. The next question is: why do movies at 48 fps look "video-y," and why do movies at 24 fps look "dreamy" and "cinematic." Why are games more realistic at 60 fps than 30 fps? Simon Cooke from Microsoft (Xbox) Advanced Technology Group has an interesting theory to explain this all. Your eyes oscillate a tiny amount, ranging from 70 to 103 Hz (on average 83.68 Hz). So here's the hypothesis: The ocular microtremors wiggle the retina, allowing it to sample at approximately 2x the resolution of the sensors. Showing someone pictures that vary at less than half the rate of the oscillation means we're no longer receiving a signal that changes fast enough to allow the supersampling operation to happen. So we're throwing away a lot of perceived-motion data, and a lot of detail as well. Some of the detail can be restored with temporal antialiasing and simulating real noise, but ideally Cooke suggests going with a high enough frame rate (over 43 fps) and if possible, a high resolution.

Comments

Bring on HFR

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, am sick of slow (seconds-long!) pans across scenery that *still* end up with judder and motion blur.

HFR isn't a gimmick like migraine-inducing stereoscopic "3D", it's more akin to adding color instead of relying solely upon greyscale for film presentation.

Like all tools, I'm sure it can be used for both good and evil. Blame evil, jump-cutting directors if the dark side is channeled.

Re:Bring on HFR

[Anonymous Coward]

Smooth panning is achieved by using pan-tables and movement rate. Unfortunately the modern director/camera personnel consider themselves above mathematical tools when they can "fix it in the studio" (or not).

Re:Bring on HFR

[binarylarry]

I personally liked the effect in the Hobbit, made the movie seem much more "real" even the ridiculously goofy parts like Radagast and the disney adventure through the misty mountains.

Re:Bring on HFR

[wonkey_monkey]

What's a pan-table when it's at home?

Unfortunately the modern director/camera personnel consider themselves above mathematical tools when they can "fix it in the studio" (or not).

I can't quite get what you're getting at. Are you saying we should continue to shoot at 24fps and fix the juddery pans in post?

Terrible idea.

Re:Bring on HFR

[SuricouRaven]

Actually, for pans, you could do exactly that. Simple whole-frame motion interpolation. Trivial algorithm, I could knock that up in an hour or two.

Not so easy if you have a moving subject though.

Re:Bring on HFR

[wonkey_monkey]

Yes, that was the "terrible idea" bit I meant. If every film was nothing but smooth, slow pans, interpolation would work fine. As soon as you put any kind of movement in there though, you've got the potential for all kinds of glitches that ruin it (for me).

Re:Bring on HFR

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen a demo of 300 fps at the International Broadcasting Conference.
It was amazing, you could actually read text on objects that were moving through the frame, like in real live. Motion blur is bad.

It's in the image

[Diddlbiker]

Movies tend to be shot around 1/50" shutter speed, and that creates motion blur. The motion blur actually helps us see the animation as smooth, even at "only" 24 fps. Games on the other hand are razor sharp and will hence look much more like a staccato sequence of images than as an animation.

Or so I was told by a moviemaker

Re:It's in the image

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like something that should be fairly easy to emulate in games, yet any motion blur in games I've seen is just awful and distracting, rather than cinematic-smooth.

Re:It's in the image

[PPalmgren]

Because in games, you're interacting with the content. Any delay in interaction is extremely jarring. Movies and such don't have this issue.

Re:It's in the image

[Anonymous Coward]

Shutter speed on the camera creates a light smear that we know as motion blur. It's basically an inaccuracy caused by the physical limits of the film and the camera. In games, why would you bother adding motion blur when it's just a mechanical artifact of filmmaking? That's like making films require interactivity. It's been tried a few times, and it generally functions correctly, but it's crap and people don't like it.

Shutter speed on the projector is responsible for the "staccato sequence of images", and basically ensures that there's a black "flicker" between each frame. You could easily do that with a game running at 24 fps. Or even higher, depending on your video card's capabilities. A black "clear" frame between each rendered-scene frame would definitely ease the processing load, even if it did double the blitting framerate.

The reason nobody does this is because games are presented, not as a constant-backlight projection, but on a light-emitting screen that has its own refresh rate and accompanying vblank. Even LCD screens have a vblank for compatibility reasons, but they don't always actually go fully dark. (Though, to be fair, neither did phosphor screens.) This is why twitch gamers are so picky about their screens' state-change timings (usually measured as gray-to-gray, or "G2G"). The faster the LCD (the actual liquid crystal, which modifies the backlight) can switch polarity, the darker that vblank actually gets.

Projector shutter speed absolutely does not create motion blur. If the mechanics of film playback created motion blur, it would all be vertical blur, since that's the direction of the actual filmstrip's motion. No, a film projector can't just pull film from one reel to the other all while shining a light through it and flicking a "shutter". Instead, it has to pull the film one frame-distance at a time, then stop it, then flick the shutter, then move to the next frame. The film frame has to be stopped while the shutter is open in order to not have vertical blur. (Alternatively, the shutter can just be really fast, the framerate much higher, and the reels just spin constantly. But that's a timing issue, rather than a concept issue.) So what you're actually seeing is a staccato sequence of images, and not an animation. Even in film.

That moviemaker doesn't really know what he's talking about on the gaming side of things and is basically talking out of his ass.

Re:It's in the image

[beelsebob]

Suggest a technique for doing it then.

Hint: there are bad solutions to this, like blending with the previous frame, and there are really really expensive solutions to this, like figuring out the paths things moved over during the frame, and rendering along those paths.

Aside - games have a much bigger problem than motion blur. Movies run at a consistent 24fps, no matter what. Games meanwhile takes varying amounts of CPU and GPU time per frame, and have fixed time windows in which a frame must have been prepared. If that fixed time window is missed, the same frame gets presented twice (or at frame rates like 24fps 3-4 times), the effect of showing some frames form 16ms others for 33ms, still more for 50ms, and still more for 66ms is much more jarring than the effect of consistently showing all frames for 42ms.

Re:It's in the image

[itzly]

Motion blur isn't perfect, though, because it only works if your eyes don't track moving objects, which is something that happens in a lot in action games.

Re:It's in the image

[kwbauer]

Diddibiker said that motion blur happens because of the camera shutter speed, not the projector and yes, camera shutter speed very definitely does affect motion blur. You can easily test this with any film camera and digital ones do a pretty good job reproducing the effect as well. Use a relative slow shutter speed like 1/60 s and snap pics of cars going by on the freeway while standing on the shoulder of said freeway. 1/60 s is usually where most fixed shutter speed cameras were set in the past. You get blurry cars. For a "fancy" effect, pan with the cars and you get a blurry background. The blur is not from being out of focus. Then do the same thing with the shutter speed at 1/1000 s and you get no blur. Another way to see this but more extreme is to open the shutter for seconds at a time at night as a car goes by, you get a big line from its lights. That is also motion blur.

Re:It's in the image

[Just Some Guy]

Also, video games tend to have no depth of field. How could they? The whole screen needs to be in focus so that you can look at any part of it. Movies have the luxury of deciding what you should pay attention to and focusing (literally) on that.

Re:It's in the image

[zippthorne]

Movies don't look smooth. They look like a staccato of motion-blurred still frames. 24fps was simply the minimum (read: cheapest) frame rate at which most of the population would perceive as mostly motion-like. Motion blur helps, but it hardly makes up for the deficiency.

Technology has advanced quite a bit since the advent of motion picture cameras, to the point that the "film" is pretty far from the most expensive line item in the budget. Why not record at a more natural frame rate?

The conceit of the movie industry is conditioning he movie watching public to believe that 24fps looks "more cinematic." How convenient for them that it is also "less expensive." But how disappointing, too, when those hard to-obtain establishing shots from high over the countryside don't really show any of the beautiful detail to the viewers?

Re: It's in the image

[Anonymous Coward]

The next question is: why do movies at 48 fps look "video-y," and why do movies at 24 fps look "dreamy" and "cinematic."

I'm sick of this repeated claim. Smoother video does not look worse. What people are actually complaining about is that they're used to artificially blurred images that compensate for the low frame rate. I'd like to see some double blind tests on differing frame rates that use the same amount of motion blurring.

Re:It's in the image

[Forever Wondering]

The mayonaise you like is the mayonaise you grew up with ...

Films are shot at 24 fps, but displayed [in theaters] at 48 fps, each frame is displayed twice: f0, black, f0, black, f1, black, f1, black, f2, ...

According to one study, when test audiences were shown true 1-to-1 48 fps film, they actually preferred the 24 fps.

The same is true for audio. Those that grew up on 128 kbps .mp3's preferred that over higher fidelity formats.

The human optic nerve has [surprisingly] low bandwidth. I worked for a company that developed a [now shipping] video product that models the human optic system and removes detail that the human eye would not see. This allows better compression without sacrificing video quality. In A/B testing of original [uncompressed] video sources vs. the detail reduced video, test audiences preferred the detail reduced video. It was considered "cleaner" and "more pleasing".

Re:It's in the image

[Anonymous Coward]

Motion picture film is shot at 24FPS which is common knowledge but each frame is projected 2 times or less common 3 times to eleminate preceved flicker. Otherwise everyone would see flicker. Slow shutter speed lets fast moving objects blur preventing jumpy motion.

Re:It's in the image

[Phreakiture]

There has been a trend in the last decade or so for the shutter speeds to be faster, plus the heavy use of CGI has resulted in razor-sharp images where motion blur would have been better.

To demonstrate this, and that it spans genres, Blade Trinity and Drumline come to mind immediately. In the former case, the CGI was too razor-sharp when viewed in a cinema, and it made it difficult to watch. In the later, there are scenes where the band are performing in bright daylight, and the fast shutter speeds made the movement of the conductor's arms and baton look jittery.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[rubycodez]

the early transparent calcite crystal lenses on the eyes of trilobites and even older compound eyes of some ancient arthropods are proof your religious fantasies are complete bullshit. The eye evolved, and we even know the creatures on the paths.

Vision systems designer wants to know

[Anonymous Coward]

What was the presumed order of "occurrence" of the oscillation hardware mutation and the supersampling "firmware" brain mutation?

I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[mark-t]

... is why cinema frame rates seem generally comfortable to watch, while video game frame rates at around the same number are problematic?

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[Rashkae]

I don't really know, but I can throw a couple educated guesses from experience. There are two reasons:

1: Motion Blur. This is even simulated in high end animated movies. (look at a scene in a movie like Shrek of How to Train your dragon, and watch frame by frame where there is motion.

2. Conistency. 24fps looks ok so long as it is consistent, either because of how the brain receives the image naturally, or just a matter of conditioning since we've been watching movies at 24fps for so long. I know when I watch video that is not properly de-telecined, (29fsp, but every 4 frames there a repeated frame) it immiediately looks very jerky and unwatcheable to me. Video game frame rate tend to swing wildly.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[binarylarry]

3) History

Film has traditionally not been HFR and thus people used to classic film are going to bitch for a while.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

I went last month to watch Dracula in a cinema and the quality was atrocious. Even in the darkness I could easily see the framerate ruining camera pans. Whenever it moved horizontally I wasn't able to look at a clear image but instead saw a blurry mess. The hobbit with 48fps was better, but I made the mistake to watch it in 3d, which has its own problems, like not being able to focus on the proper distance in quick action scenes, so I ended not enjoying the movie at all due to being unable to see action clearly. Of course the landscape shots were gorgeous, but I live not far from mountains so I can just open the window.

I'm still waiting for 4k 60fps because right now even 1080p60fps looks better to me than 4k30fps because it doesn't look like a fucking slideshow.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the other root posts mentions it. Motion blur. If the exposure of an image is roughly the same as the time it is displayed, you will see it as an approximation of the events in that 2 thirds* period. I can't comment on how much of that was trained from watching 24fps TV all day and how much has to do with neurological signal timing.
The main problem with video game motion blur algorithms is they tend to either overdo it to the point where it looks like some drug induced haze, or they are so subtle that you cannot see a difference between enabled and not at any given framerate.

*recently read that classic time measurement doesn't bottom out at the second. Minute and second are short for "prime minute of the hour" and "second minute of the hour". The only thing preventing thirds and smaller was the difficulty in reliably measuring such a scale. Thus 2 thirds would be 1/30th of a second.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[beelsebob]

Simple - game frame rates aren't consistent.

The effect of showing some frames for 16ms and others for 33ms (what will happen if your game is running at somewhere between 30 and 60 fps) is much more jarring to you than the effect of showing all frames for 42ms.

This is why hitting 60fps (or slightly above) is the magic number at which it all looks smooth again - at that point, all frames are rendered before the screen refreshes, and you get an absolutely smooth 60fps with 16ms frame times across the board. The reason you ideally want to be slightly above 60fps, is because some frames will always takes slightly longer to render than others, you want even those to be rendered before the screen refresh.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't comment on how much of that was trained from watching 24fps TV all day and how much has to do with neurological signal timing.

None and none.

You've never watched 24fps TV. NTSC is 60fps (59.96 for color) and PAL is 50fps. Neither of them is an even multiple of 24fps. The closest you'll come is 25, 29.98, or 30.

Your neurological signal timing is way off from 24fps too. The eye processes things in stages, and much of that processing happens on the optic nerve bundle before it ever reaches the brain. The "render path" is generally as follows:
1) Identify motion: Motion is identified around the edges of the fields. This is done by comparing the current state of a given retinal cell to its previous energy level. This is where data feedback from 2 & 3 is put to use.
2) Separate fields: Things are separated into fields along high contrast barriers. Think of this like the "bucket" tool in a paint program, except in reverse.
3) Identify color: Color data is added to contrast data to further refine field barriers.
4) Identify objects: This is where the brain starts bringing in memory resources to match things up to existing experiences.
5) Construct scene: Everything gets "parsed" into a depth-perceived scene. From this point on, higher brain functions take over.
6) Repeat.

Once you've passed step 1, the brain's neurosignalling speed is 13 frames per second per field. Yes, it's not a global framerate, but rather a per-contrasting-field framerate. This article explains how that 13FPSPF rate is adjusted up or down based on how fast your eyes scan across the scene in front of you. There's also an inter-frame, 7FPSPF processing delay that happens interleaved across half of the next frame, but it's all in parallel anyway, so it's not a huge delay.

In TFA, they're talking strictly about viewing things on a screen. That's a bit of a difference because, whether you pay attention to it or not, you're still seeing everything around and behind that screen while you're watching it. Concentrating on that screen is a higher-order brain function, handled after step 5 above. That's going to introduce some extra delays.

But their conclusions are not surprising. High contrast on a screen is still going to trigger field boundaries, and changing the shape of those fields is still going to appear as "motion". So take the number of contrasting "objects" on your screen and multiply that by 13, and that's what your screen's framerate needs to be in order for you to not see any "choppiness". Since that final framerate number is likely in the thousands, your 60fps monitor just isn't going to cut it.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[jones_supa]

The refresh rate, motion bluring and related artifacts are more a function of the screen technology anyway. I don't see the hard core players swearing off LCDs and sticking to CRTs.

There can also be a digital processing stage in an LCD, which increases latency. With a CRT, the picture signal travels in a fully analog path right away when sent through the VGA connector.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[izat]

Bullshit. The difference between 60 and 120 Hz is incredibly obvious. Also I have no idea what you're talking about but video cards have always supported more than 72 FPS, the only limit is the display, and many CRTs back in the day went up to 85 Hz or higher.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: Motion blur.

Cinema has smooth, natural motion blur. Video games either don't have it, or they combine multiple discrete images to try to fake the motion blur.

* Technically some newer video games actually do have smooth motion blur; they use a technique called a summed area table to compute the sum of a given area of the static image in O(1) per pixel. This allows them to fake the continuous motion blur of a fast moving object by blending a smoothly blurred ghost trail of the moving object into the final image.

** However, the SAT technique really only works convincingly for axis-aligned movements, because the summed areas have to be rectangular. You can mitigate this some by subtracting out the corners, but that triples the cost of the effect, and it's still not perfect.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[Twinbee]

Just to say that Nvidia's new Gsync will allow for any frame rate perfectly consistent as long as you have a new Gsync monitor.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[Mashiki]

Gsync is already DOA, VESA has adopted AMD's Freesync over it. Including no licensing charges, which basically means compared to Gsync where nvidia wanted to charge for it, they're screwed.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[aliquis]

I assume due to motion blur because things moves in frames and they aren't razor sharp so the video content will flow into each other anyway.

Some games have motion blur but if you base that on the previous frame you will still see part of that frame and hence likely react slower because you're still seeing old content.

Considering some monitors do 144 Hz and GPU-synced I don't think it's much of an issue with the right equipment though.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[beelsebob]

Not quite. What gsync/freesync do is allow the monitor to be notified of when a frame has been produced, and trigger a swap exactly then. That doesn't mean that all frames are displayed for an equal amount of time.

Sure, it means that if one frame is late, it doesn't wait until the next vertical blank, but it does still mean that the previous frame is on screen for longer. If for example, a series of frames takes 12,14,30, and 16 ms to render, normally you'll see the frame before first for 16ms, the next for 16, the next for 33, the next for 16, etc. With gsync, you'll see them for 12ms, 14ms, 30ms and 16ms respectively. That's still jittery, just not as jittery.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent big bucks for a 120 hz capable monitor so I could play tribes2 in stereo with 60 frames per eye ball. High hz monitors act like incandescent projectors without flicker.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

All that's missing is claiming the human eye can't see above 30 FPS.

Re:I RTFA'd, and I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to have an 85hz CRT and would get 150+ FPS with my videocard. I was at a LAN party and saw someone's monitor and I thought Counter-strike looked strangely "smoother" for some reason. I asked him what his FPS and refresh was. He had a 100hz CRT. I'm not sure how high the refresh can go before no longer telling a difference, but I definitely could tell the extra 15hz of 100 over 85.

"Your eyes oscillate"??

[azav]

What about our eyes is oscillating?

Re:"Your eyes oscillate"??

[Anonymous Coward]

The retina?

ocular microtremors wiggle the retina

Re:"Your eyes oscillate"??

[sribe]

What about our eyes is oscillating?

The whole eye. Our eyes actually cannot detect a static edge, only transitions. The reason we can see non-moving objects is that the oscillations of the eye provide the transitions. There's a simple experiment from long ago which illustrates this vividly: put a black square on a white background, track a subject's eye motion and move that target with the eye motion so that the image is always hitting the retina at the same location, and voila, the subject cannot see that target.

Re:"Your eyes oscillate"??

[Anonymous Coward]

The experiment from long ago cannot possibly have been tracking the micro-oscillations that this article discusses. Might that experiment not have been demonstrating the physiological blind spot, where the optic nerve enters the eye? It's because of our eye motion that we don't notice that blind spot, but those are gross movements, not micro-oscillations.

Re:"Your eyes oscillate"??

[tlhIngan]

The whole eye. Our eyes actually cannot detect a static edge, only transitions. The reason we can see non-moving objects is that the oscillations of the eye provide the transitions. There's a simple experiment from long ago which illustrates this vividly: put a black square on a white background, track a subject's eye motion and move that target with the eye motion so that the image is always hitting the retina at the same location, and voila, the subject cannot see that target.

The other reason is the "sensors" we have are quite poor - the eyeball itself is actually a very low resolution device - the high resolution center part of the eye covers such a narrow field of view that it's practically useless if it was a fixed camera, while the peripheral vision is so low res it's unusable.

Instead, what happens is we evolved a gigantic amount of wetware to process the image into a high-resolution image we perceive - the brain does a lot of visual processing, and the eyes rapidly move (or oscillate) to move the sharp high-res center vision around to give you a much higher "virtual resolution" than the actual Mk. 1 Eyeball can achieve.

Of course, this visual processing comes at a price - optical illusions abound because it's very easy to trick the wetware into seeing things that aren't there, because the information is often interpolated, shifted in time, etc.

Re:"Your eyes oscillate"??

[Solandri]

Some representations of what our eyes really see.

Re:"Your eyes oscillate"??

[sribe]

The experiment from long ago cannot possibly have been tracking the micro-oscillations that this article discusses.

What makes you think that? It was possible to build sensitive eye-tracking systems long long ago. They were far bigger and more expensive than what you can cobble together with a Raspberry Pi, but they existed. Kids today have no idea what the prior generations accomplished with analog circuits ;-)

Re:"Your eyes oscillate"??

[Anonymous Coward]

the eyes rapidly move (or oscillate) to move the sharp high-res center vision around to give you a much higher "virtual resolution" than the actual Mk. 1 Eyeball can achieve

What you are describing are called 'saccades'. What the article discusses however are micro-saccades, and their function is quite different. The purpose of micro-saccades (which happen even when intently staring at one point) is to generate variance of input to the nerves in the fovea (the focal point on the retina, where we 'see sharp'). The nerves need this, otherwise they start compensating for the fixed stimulus level.

You experience the same effect when you walk from a brightly lit area into a dark one, but to the same extent on all the nerves in the fovea instead of a specific compensation per group of nerve cells depending on their stimulus. You will be momentarily blinded until your eyes adjust for the new light level, because the eyes are still adjusted for the brighter level. Without micro-saccades, you would have this effect in different quantities on small groups of nerves whenever you would stare at a fixed point, depending on the amount of stimulus those nerves are receiving, and eventually each of the nerves would have compensated to the point that the image would turn a neutral grey.

In my tests...

[BrendaEM]

It would take hundreds of frames per second to truly fool the eye. We tend to have long decay, which I believe offers a hardware solution for "Where is it coming from?" but human attack FPS is much higher than you might think.

Makes sense

[Dan East]

This makes sense. One of the things that drives me nuts about those cheap Chinese no-name Android tablets is the display. They draw every other pixel in a checkerboard type fashion, and if your eye is totally still then you don't notice. However if you move your eye quickly back and forth you can clearly see that only half the pixels are drawn at a time. So there's something about the motion that doesn't allow enough processing time to smooth that out. It's amazing how much our visual processing smooths things and even totally fills in parts that aren't even visible, but that requires an image to be steady at least to some degree.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually have a huge honking blind spot in both eyes that your brain conveniently fills in. :)

Get rid of Frames!!!!

[dfn5]

The smoothest frame rate would be no frames. 2,073,600 analog tracks, one for each pixel of a 1080p display would smoothly transition from one color to another. OK, so maybe the recording tape would be 3 feet wide. But a small price to pay for smooth video.

Re:Get rid of Frames!!!!

[Charliemopps]

All recording mediums, even Tapes and records are digital if you look close enough. There is a limit to how fine a change you can have even in a record groove. So the fact of the matter is, eventually digital will be able to surpass any conceivable analog source in sampling rate.

Re: Get rid of Frames!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Sound is a wave. Unless you're getting down to the atomic level, digital will never even DUPLICATE analog, let alone surpass it. And at that point you're replicating so much data, digital doesn't make any sense. Now whether or not that matters is a different argument. But you're statement is completely false. Had you made a statement about practicality and perception . . . But that's a matter of preference. I think digital and analog both have their places. I use both and don't believe either is categorically superior. That's like saying purple is better than orange. Each has its place, some prefer the other more, but to eradicate one in favor of the other is just silly.

Re:Get rid of Frames!!!!

[zlives]

make it so!!

Re:Get rid of Frames!!!!

[Megane]

That's like saying laserdisc is digital "because it's got pits and non-pits". Except that the length of the pits and non-pits is very much analog. (It's a full-bandwidth FM signal driven to maximum overmodulation. VHS does a similar thing.) In other words, the digital-ness becomes analog if you look even closer.

Re: Get rid of Frames!!!!

[kwbauer]

The poster to whom you replied mentioned recordings and while not exactly correct he is closer than you are about recordings. What he was pointing out is that the recordings he mentioned, analog tape and vinyl records, operate using discrete sampling, the same as digital does. This is because the recoding/reading process of analog tape has limits and so does the groove on vinyl records. Listening to a concert with all acoustic instruments is about the only way to guarantee no discreteness. Even analog amps can introduce discreteness at the edges and even the speakers can introduce a level of discreteness over the compressed air waves coming out a trumpet or of off violin or piano strings. The problem is about getting the level of discreteness below your ability to notice and there is no reason why digital can't do that as well as analog.

Re:Get rid of Frames!!!!

[kwbauer]

or the analog becomes digital if you turn it around. The point is that the only faithful reproduction of a how a trumpet causes waves of compressed air is a trumpet. No series of microphone -> vacuum tubes -> magnets -> flexible diaphragm will produce exactly the same set of waves as the trumpet (or piano strings or vocal cords, etc.) You get to the point that the difference is not perceivable by whatever instrument you choose to measure with and then call it perfect. A great number of people choose to use their own ears as the instrument with which they measure and when they no longer perceive a difference, then the reproduction may be considered as perfect for them.

Re:Get rid of Frames!!!!

[qwak23]

We could also make the argument that the sound from the trumpet is itself digital, with an exceptionally fine grained sampling.

Or possibly aliasing

[Anonymous Coward]

between the tremor frequency and the frame rate?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[binarylarry]

Evolution doesn't push "purpose" or "meaning" it's simply an ongoing discovering of how life exists and changes over time.

Religious zealots find it to be an intrusion into their belief system and thus automatically try to make it into a religion.

What we know about the process of evolution is constantly changing and as a science NOTHING we think we know is sacred. Like the Sith, religion is the only thing dealing in absolutes.

Movie FPS

[meustrus]

why do movies at 48 fps look "video-y," and why do movies at 24 fps look "dreamy" and "cinematic."

For the same reason children are picky eaters. They say that people have to take three bites of a new flavor to really know if they like or dislike it. I have personally experienced that, going from "wtf this is so wrong" to "ok it's not so bad and I might actually like this" between bite 1 and bite 3. Well, we all grew up consuming 24 fps movies, and anything higher is new and different. Rather than "take three bites", though, so many of us recoil from the different experience and immediately start talking to all our friends about how it looks wrong, concluding that high FPS just looks bad. Try. Three. Bites.

Re:Movie FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

They say that people have to take three bites of a new flavor

Based on the rest of your post, apparently by "they" you mean you.

Re:Movie FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than "take three bites", though, so many of us recoil from the different experience and immediately start talking to all our friends about how it looks wrong, concluding that high FPS just looks bad. Try. Three. Bites.

"An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded." -- Gabriel Angelos

Re:Movie FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

It also helps if you watch porn. Lots of porn.

So there you go kids, if you want people to feel at ease with 48FPS films, just show them porn. Fun for all the family.

Re:Movie FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll agree with this. I rarely go to a theater to watch a movie, but when I do, I find the 24 FPS to be extremely disturbing. If anyone honestly prefers it, it isn't because it's better. Maybe it's because, with such a big screen and a dark theater, the brain doesn't do so well without a major cue that what it is looking at isn't the world moving around it (and thus it needs to become dizzy), but it is instead an animated image, and the 24 FPS provides it with that cue. ...but I dunno, I just made that up, but I'm sure there's a thousand reason more plausible than the idea that 24 FPS is somehow a better image.

Re:Movie FPS

[Myrmi]

Is this the real reason they made three Hobbit movies?

Re:Movie FPS

[meustrus]

Maybe it's because, with such a big screen and a dark theater, the brain doesn't do so well without a major cue that what it is looking at isn't the world moving around it (and thus it needs to become dizzy), but it is instead an animated image, and the 24 FPS provides it with that cue. ...but I dunno, I just made that up

That sounds plausible. Much like everybody else's made up explanation.

Re:Movie FPS

[meustrus]

The three bite rule was not my idea, but it didn't come from the internet and I can't seem to find any references. Maybe it's just an old bit of parenting folklore.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Empiric]

So, you're refuting religion in general with a principle of a religion Lucas made up, stating as an absolute that only religion deals in absolutes?

Just checking here.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[jeffmflanagan]

Smart people don't choose to believe things because they want them to be true like you do. An idea doesn't have to give you a warm fuzzy feeling to be true.

If religious people had any proof, it would no longer be religion. Of course they don't, because the supernatural is imaginary. Too many people fail to grow out of their childhood superstitions, and never develop an evidence-based adult worldview.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[morgauxo]

That would be Pascal's wager. The problem with it is that an all-knowing God would know the difference between you telling yourself that you believe in him in order to secure your salvation vs you actually believing. So... you go through the motions all your life just to burn in hell anyway.

I don't know about you but for me belief is a conclusion I come to based on the evidence I know about, not a decision that I make. Anything else would just be lying to myself. The evidence I see and know about overwellmingly supports evolution. If the reality around me is just an illusion planted by Satan to test me or a corruption resulting from the fall or planted by God to test me then I guess I am just screwed because what I see does not match up with any supernatural creation myth I have ever heard of.

By the way, evolution has nothing to do with purpose, progress or meaning. You have to make that for yourself. Evolution is just change and an explanation of why the change hapens the way it does.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[zlives]

I think he might mean the "made up" part more than any particular example.
Personally i am not averse to having a creator, or life having "meaning" or even an afterlife. But I am not constrained by it, do not view the world in absolutes. As each religion is the one true path to salvation and all others are heresy.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[fisted]

Origin of the silicon inside our computers hereby comprehensively explained.

FTFY

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[zlives]

Belief requires faith. Smart or not!! until proven everything is conjecture/theory. I kinda feel that way about string theory, but that's probably because i am not so smart.
Facts are disputed as belief, and that's mostly being closed minded and nothing to do with smarts.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[YoungManKlaus]

what a weak try at trolling

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Empiric]

If religious people had any proof, it would no longer be religion.

Sure it would. Why would the definition of "religion" change? I mean, the real one, not the Dawkins made-up one.

But, "proof" (clever of you to goalpost-shift this up front to a criteria virtually nothing, including science, can meet, by the way) would be tantamount to worldwide forced conversion. You'd either have to accept it, or go to an asylum for denying basic proven facts. Might you see a reason a God would not want that, particularly in this era of global communication?

That said, to use reasonable epistemological criteria, here's peer-reviewed evidence. As with most domains, -evidence-, not -proof-, is the intellectually-honest expectation.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[rubycodez]

no appeal, just fact. A person's life can have purpose if they will and act for it to be so.

Your god must really, really have hated those Syrian children that writhed in agony for minutes as they died of chemical weapon poisoning. Must really, really hate the millions of africans that starve and are slaughtered in genocides. what a vindictive bastard He is.

Mushrooms (may work with other drugs)

[r_naked]

Anyone that has done mushrooms can tell you that seeing the world at the frame rate that the brain is capable of processing is a load of fun. I have no idea how psilocybin affects the visual processing center of the brain -- or hell, it may affect the eye itself, what I do know is stepping out into a room and looking around without the brain discarding the frames that it doesn't feel like processing is amazing. However, it does look completely fake. It is too clear / crisp. Our brains aren't used to seeing every little change -- they discard information. So, if you are watching a movie at 48 or 60fps, it looks fake is the best way I can describe it. That is because when you are looking at the screen, you have a central place to focus, and my guess is the brain doesn't discard information if you aren't moving.

Again, this is just my guess, but I think the reason video games look much better at high frame rates is the fact that they already don't look realistic. We are expecting really crisp, sharp, fast graphics. Literally -- it is all in your mind.

As a test, pan your head from left to right and notice the "jumpiness" that is reality. Now, eat about a half gram of shrooms, and do the same thing. It is no longer jumpy, and you get a REAL smooth pan.

Re:Mushrooms (may work with other drugs)

[itzly]

Unless of course, the mushroom just make you think this is happening.

Re:Mushrooms (may work with other drugs)

[lannocc]

As a test, pan your head from left to right and notice the "jumpiness" that is reality. Now, eat about a half gram of shrooms, and do the same thing. It is no longer jumpy, and you get a REAL smooth pan.

Do the same test, but hold out your finger a foot or two in front of your eyes and move your finger with your head. Focusing on the finger, you now see a smooth transition of the background. The "jumpiness" you experience without it is simply your eyes trying to fix on any number of objects as you are panning (my layman's interpretation). I can get the smooth transition without using the finger crutch, by "defocusing" my eyes, but only panning left to right... I can't do it right to left. My guess is it has something to do with the years upon years of eye training, reading from left to right.

Re:Mushrooms (may work with other drugs)

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for people expanding their minds with hallucinogenics, but it's also important to realize that you aren't going to solve all of the universes mysteries just because you are tripping.

Seeing things differently while under the influence of mushrooms, does not mean that you are finally seeing things the way your eyes are supposed to.

Re:Mushrooms (may work with other drugs)

[Mocko]

Likely, since the eye always moves in saccades, on drugs or not. Smoothness is a brain process task, Ramachandran had a stroke patient who lost the smooth-stitch function - cars jump yards at a time, coffee pours uncontrollably etc.

Re:Mushrooms (may work with other drugs)

[r_naked]

The "jumpiness" you experience without it is simply your eyes trying to fix on any number of objects as you are panning (my layman's interpretation).

That is actually my understanding as well. The brain wants to focus on what it has been trained to be the most pertinent objects, so it just jumps from object to object. I am fairly certain this is why people that are put under deep hypnosis can recall details of a situation that they can't do consciously. I don't think the brain discards that information, I think it is like off screen rendering that still gets saved to RAM :)

I tried your finger trick, and while it was definitely smoother, it still was not like watching a 48 or 60fps video.

Re:Mushrooms (may work with other drugs)

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just mushrooms. I've had the same effect with copious alcohol and weed. Though part of the reason the pan was smooth was that I could barely move my eyes. Good shit, it was.

Motion blur is temporal AA

[tepples]

There are several ways to apply temporal antialiasing or "motion blur", each of which is analogous to a well-known spatial antialiasing method. One is to render the scene twice at a slight time offset and average the two; this is the temporal counterpart to FSAA. Or find the motion vector around the frontmost mesh in each 8x8 pixel section of the screen and add a local blur filter; this is more like MSAA. But in the march from 240p (PlayStation and Nintendo 64) to 1080p (current consoles) and higher (PC master race), the preference has been for more detail in each frame rather than a better illusion of motion within a frame.

Re:Motion blur is temporal AA

[Nemyst]

Current motion blur techniques are smarter than you seem to imply, but we're still really far from anything resembling movies. Most implementations use per-pixel blurring (not blocks of a certain size), sometimes across multiple velocities per pixel, but they're still gross approximations which lack information (such as what's behind the frontmost objects). Re-rendering the scene multiple times at different time points, on top of being extremely time-consuming, looks really bad. You need something like 50+ images per frame to create the illusion of smoothness, and at that point you're better off simply presenting 100 frames per second and letting the human eye apply blur.

Offline techniques use stochastic sampling instead, so you're still effectively re-rendering the image a certain number of times at different time positions, but the difference is that each pixel uses its own set of unique time positions, which trades banding (i.e. being able to clearly see the different time steps) for noise. This sort of technique can be applied in real-time using algorithms like stochastic rasterization, but we're quite far from seeing that used in actual games.

Re:Motion blur is temporal AA

[tepples]

You need something like 50+ images per frame to create the illusion of smoothness, and at that point you're better off simply presenting 100 frames per second and letting the human eye apply blur.

A standard TV can't present 100 frames per second. The tradeoff becomes whether to improve realism by adding more detailed lighting (which takes longer to compute) or by simplifying geometry and lighting to hit 120 fps, rendering twice, and combining them into a 60 fps picture for the TV.

Re:Motion blur is temporal AA

[Shadow of Eternity]

Or, as PC gamers have known since the Quake era, you render the game at 60fps or higher and the human eye will blur moving things entirely on its own.

Re:Motion blur is temporal AA

[Jane Q. Public]

You ALL seem to be forgetting interleave, which is the one motion-enabling technology most responsible for reasonable motion effects on television. (NTSC TV of course also has a higher frame rate: 29.97 fps.)

1080p (p for progressive, i.e. one full frame at a time like film) became the norm because of its higher pixel-per-second count. But let's not forget about 1080i, where the i is for interleave. 1080i shows motion much better.

Re:Motion blur is temporal AA

[Anonymous Coward]

Interlace, Jane. Interlace. Learn the words before lecturing others.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Yosho]

The appeal is that it's the truth. People want to discover the truth about how our world works and how we came to exist in it, and science is how we do that -- and every bit of science we have indicates that evolution is the only plausible explanation for the current diversity of life on Earth.

you're pushing the idea that life has no true purpose and random death means progress

No, we're not, and I think the whole "you can't have meaning without religion!" bit is one of the most insidious lies the Christian church has pushed. Not following the dogma laid out in 2000-year-old books means you can make your own purpose in life. You can decide what gives you meaning and what you consider progress. I promise that if you go to any Humanist gathering, you will see plenty of people who have meaning and purpose without religion. Talk to them a bit, even -- I'll bet they'll be perfectly friendly if you say, "Hey, I'm a Christian but wanted to see what you guys are all about." Learning first-hand what life without religion is like is better than taking your pastor's word for it (after all, do you think maybe he has his own agenda?).

I'd rather bet on a .001% chance that Jesus is Lord than 99.999% chance that life is based on nothing but random chance and death.

Here's the thing, though: there's not a 0.001% chance of that, there's a 0% chance of it. There is zero evidence than any sort of supernatural being exists at all, and it's a huge leap from there to "Christianity is true," with just as much evidence. You are believing it purely because it makes you feel good. That's your choice, but maybe you should find out what the alternative is actually like before dismissing it.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[rubycodez]

Hallucinations of the dying don't constitute proof of anything. Your god is merely a group psychosis constructed by goat and sheep herders less than three thousand years ago.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot "evolve" from slime into a monkey then give birth to a human. Basic science FACT!

Understand that the blink of said human eye barely represents the amount of time modern man has existed. You know, the man that created things like science.

And refusing to accept that evolution does exist and can evolve in rather extreme ways across millions of years only brings proof to the FACT that man can be basically ignorant as all hell.

But hey, who's to argue against the value of ignorance? After all, something had to come along and grant modern man the creative outlet to make things like religion...

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[nedlohs]

Whereas some other people would rather the truth, or as good as they can get to it. As opposed to a lie that makes you feel better about yourself. Especially when it makes a lot of people feel worse about themselves in practice.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Empiric]

Again, whether it constitutes "proof" is irrelevant. However, one does have reason to consider as evidence the decidedly non-random nature of the "hallucinations" supposedly caused by brain failure (try to short out your computer and see if you suddenly get presented with a new 3D MMO, for example), which correlate very highly with the religious model's predictions.

Formally, though I understand your statement is a Bare Assertion Fallacy troll, it is factually and scientifically incorrect to claim it is a "psychosis". Formally, per the actual field you clearly have no knowledge of, a position that the majority of a culture subscribes to cannot be a "psychosis", per the DSM. Your use (and Dawkins', who you parrot) is simply scientifically and factually false.

I could go on, but rather I'll leave you with a challenge. Predict the upper-bound of the lifespan of a man for the -next- 2500 years. Let's see how you rate compare to the goat herders.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[JasonGoatcher]

God didn't kill those people, human selfishness did. Additionally, God does not give people more suffering than they can bear, have you considered the possibility that those writhing bodies might have ceased having conscious people in them long before they stopped writhing?

24 fps are (or at least were) projected at 72 fps

[Anonymous Coward]

The old Bell & Howell 16mm projectors (24 fps) actually projected at 72 fps (call it flashes per second). The projector had a 3 bladed circular shutter. The film was pulled down one frame while the shutter was closed with one blade, then as the shutter rotated the frame was 'flashed' 3 times, then the next frame pulled down and the process repeated. The human eye could see flicker at 24 fps but not so much at 72. The video experts here can correct me, but I believe standard NTSC video was 30 fps of 'data' scanned twice to give 60 to reduce perceived flicker.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

Life has no meaning... unless you give it one. Even the Bible only really gives life a single purpose, which is the same biological reason for life. To procreate.

I don't have faith in Christ, I have faith in God. While some "Christians" consider me not religious for that, I do tend to list my religious beliefs as athiest when asked because it's easier than explaining my faith. You see I don't just believe in God, I *know* there is a God. It is a feeling deep in my soul that I know there is something there. What God is, I don't have the beginning of a clue, I've searched my soul and read various texts, went to various churches, none felt right about what I know about God. I just know He, She or It's there. I've learned that it doesn't matter what religion we follow they all tend to teach the same basic tenets. which ultimately amount to "Don't be shitty to each other", some people add disclaimers to that, but the religion itself never teaches that, people who argue about islam breeding terrorists, I just point them to the KKK, Christians doing the same thing, it's not the religion that's evil, it's the people who twist religion to meet their own prejudices and anger. That being said, I also know evolution is true. What I don't understand is why belief in God as a creator and evolution have to be exclusive. neither one denies the other. God is a deity, an unobservable being of extraordinary power (Thus very anti-scientific since scientific requires observation). Evolution is an observable process. Dough rising is also an observable process. Does dough become bread only through an act of God? Of course not. Why is evolution considered to be so icky. Because it explains things that couldn't be explained before? When did knowledge become forbidden. I for one, don't believe the ancient texts on how the world was created (created in 6 days and all that). I tend to believe the modern scientific hypotheses more than a 3000 year old book written to try to answer questions that had no answers, especially considering the age of the universe. Does this make me question my faith? Of course not. God isn't just a magic man in the sky, God is also an idea. Even most religions teach that God is everything, Thus God IS the universe. Understanding the processes the universe has, brings us closer to understanding God. Understanding Gravity, Understanding radiation, understanding evolution, understanding biology, understanding the beauty of all of creation that was created for us to understand, all of it is understanding God. And I think that's what's scary, if we undertstand God, and how God works, what is next? To be fair, I think a lot of it is the fact that Christians tend to all be commandment breakers. Specifically the anti-idolatry commandment. Christians have made God into an Idol. And if an Idol doesn't live up to your expectations, you lose faith in it. That's why I don't consider myself Christian. God is there. not to be worshipped, not to be idolized, He just is.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[JasonGoatcher]

I'm confused, are you calling evolution a lie or christianity? With the statements you made, either could be plausible.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for taking the bait. /. has become little more than an ad-impression click-bait aggregator for yesterday's news/themes, where discussions have dropped to near reddit levels, or become lame jokes because the subject is too demanding.

By posting one silly comment (I'm an atheist), I discover there are people here that can argue without diving into the gutter and reverting to stereotypes and name calling.

Happy yule time to all! I'd buy you all a beer if I could.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

have you considered the possibility that those writhing bodies might have ceased having conscious people in them long before they stopped writhing?

So you're saying Jesus didn't suffer on the cross for our sins?
Human suffering is real. Denying it is a sign of sociopathy, or in theological terms "evil".
Which would make you a sinner...

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous Coward, I choose you!
My Anonymous Coward's evolving!
He evolved into a Magikarp!

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[rubycodez]

Such an imaginary construct does indeed fit the definition of psychosis by DSM, and in other cultures "near death experiences" can take vastly different forms. Hence, your links are to worthless imaginings. It is past time for society to admit religion is an irrational, often dangerous delusion that has done far more harm to people than good. It enables war, abuse, theft, and mental illness and is despicable remnant of the worst of human's history.

Re: The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to read up on chemical weapons. Everyone was concious right up untill they suffocated from a paralysed diaphram.

Your analogy and belief on pain is no different than that republicans comment on genuine rape resulting in pregnancies being rejected. I suggest you take some time and visit a hospice some time and talk to some of the patients about pain. People are frequently exposed to more pain they can bare all the fucking time. Ive seen people beg to be killed, I myself was once in a position that if I believed that level of pain was going to continue for much longer I knew with certainty I was going to kill myself.

You need to reevaluate your presumptions because right now you are fucking idiot.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

The proof of God's existence is the Holy Spirit, you don't know God because you don't want to know God.

If God wants me to know him then he needs to come down here and have a beer with me first.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Denihil]

i have more faith in lucas's made up religion than anything that christians have dreamed up. at least lucas's vision hasn't been altered thousandfold times by different orders.

that being said, they're both bullshit. honestly trying to argue evolution or science to a religious zealout is like trying to talk to a child.

so i'm going to end it with this. fuck you, and fuck your religion. have a great day.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Denihil]

did he cum inside you, or did the holy spirit pull out first?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[fustakrakich]

Even if true, you're pushing the idea that life has no true purpose and random death means progress.

You say that like it's a bad thing

Re:24 fps are (or at least were) projected at 72 f

[wonkey_monkey]

It's not about flicker, it's about the smoothness of motion.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[fustakrakich]

Whose god?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

There is zero evidence than any sort of supernatural being exists at all, and it's a huge leap from there to "Christianity is true," with just as much evidence.

Here's a spanner in the works: Testimony is a form of evidence, corroborated testimony especially so. There are more than zero corraborated testimonials of any sort of supernatural beings existing, and back when Christianity was young there were supposedly many witnesses to the miraculous.

Don't take a different tack and say you want proof. Proof requires rigid mathematics within a framework designed explicitly to be a-temporal; nothing from nature need apply, let alone super-nature.

I don't get it

[wonkey_monkey]

At 48Hz, you’re going to pull out more details at 48Hz from the scene than at 24Hz, both in terms of motion and spatial detail.

Motion yes, but spatial? I don't get that bit.

[at 24Hz] We’re no longer receiving a signal that changes fast enough to allow the super-sampling operation to happen.

Err, what? You're not supersampling if the data has changed between the two samplings.

To answer the question posed in the headline:

Why movies look weird at 48fps

Because it's not what we're used to when we go to the movies. That's all.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand the appeal of evolution. Even if true, you're pushing the idea that life has no true purpose and random death means progress.

Science and religion are orthogonal.
There is no reason why God couldn't influence the world in a way that agrees with science.
If the universe appears to work with probabilities, then why couldn't God steer those probabilities?
After all he's supposed to be almighty, and he created the universe and its laws.
Why would God need to create the end product, a single eye, when he could design the whole evolutionary tree?
If you believe in God, but deny evolution, you deny God's will and might.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what she said.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Empiric]

This would be why you make sure you always argue with theists who reject evolution, I'll bet.

Which, for the record, is a minority of them. Unless you mean people who mean by "evolution" the irrational non-sequitur of "evolution is true, therefore there is no God" or other "often, therefore always" notions of evolutionary change.

Happy holidays, do enjoy your pet false dichotomy this festive season.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be Pascal's wager.

And Pascal's wager is easily disproven. Which "God" are you going to believe in, among those that explicitly deny the existence of any others?

If you believe in the Christian God, then when you die, Shaitan's penis will rip your ass regularly; his semen will scorch your throat frequently... Oh, wait, maybe it will be Angra Mainyu doing those things. Or maybe it will be Apep. Or the devil-substitute in some other Middle-Eastern religion (nota bene: religions which are not descended from those of the Middle-East generally lack such things).

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[kwbauer]

The correct answer (from a doctrinal standpoint) to your first question is "No, he suffered for our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane."

Yes, human suffering is real and it is caused by God in the sense that Lenin's great-great-great-grandparents are the cause of all the deaths in the Soviet Union.

Religion is not science

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't confuse science with religion. They have nothing to do with each other. There are people that view science as religion, or others that view religion as science. Both are equally wrong.

Science is knowledge, ever changing since we don't see the whole picture.

Religion is dogma. Fixed, at least for duration of one's lifetime. But still, it changes just so religion can survive. Dogmas of 1000 years ago are not dogmas today.

Anyway, you may want to refer to official statements of Catholic church on this, that evolution has nothing to do with contradicting religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

On October 27, 2014, Pope Francis issued a statement at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that "Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation," warning against thinking of God's act of creation as "God [being] a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything."

In an October 22, 1996, address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II updated the Church's position to accept evolution of the human body:

   

"In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points.... Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studiesâ"which was neither planned nor soughtâ"constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."[46]

In the same address, Pope John Paul II rejected any theory of evolution that provides a materialistic explanation for the human soul:

"Theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man."

Since soul is an ephemeral notion that has nothing to do with science, catholic view is not going to clash with science. You see, they have learned from their earlier mistakes which included apology that Earth is in fact round, not flat and does go around the Sun.

So, follow the catholic church on this. Human body evolved from monkeys or whatever. God created that human soul. And since it's the soul that matters, not the body, there is no problems.

But if you try to point to things like "human eye is proof of God perfect design", then you will just make a fool out of yourself (or if you point at anything physical as proof of God). Just to counter the eye issue, the eye as evolved to function in water, no air. Fish see a lot better than people. Plenty of animals don't have blindspots - their eyes evolves so optic nerve connections don't go in front of the retina, unlike the inferior human eye. So if human eye is perfection of design of God, why do lower animals have much better eye both in design and function?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

at least lucas's vision hasn't been altered thousandfold times by different orders.

No, it's been altered thousandfold times by Lucas himself.

Re:24 fps are (or at least were) projected at 72 f

[jones_supa]

It still good to ponder what flicker could tell us. For example, the 200 Hz LCD backlight PWM frequency causes sore eyes and headaches to many people, so certainly the eyes and/or nervous system are sensing something? Put some white text on a black background on a computer like that and you can see multiple images of the text when rapidly turning eyes horizontally. Of course, as you say, the picture appearing and disappearing is largely a different discussion when compared to motion sensing, but there might be a bridge which can combine these discussions for some benefit.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[William Baric]

Whether believing in a god is a sign of psychosis or not depends on why you believe.

If you believe because you want to be part of your cultural group or because you find it useful (either from a social point of view or a personal one), I agree it has nothing to do with psychosis. But if you truly feel there is a god, then obviously your sense of reality is wrong and this is what psychosis is about.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't arguing about who or what causes suffering.
I was offended by his claim that human suffering is OK since God removes consciousness.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[William Baric]

If religion had any kind of proof it would be called "science".

The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

Before civilization, people lived in villages for tens of thousands of years and lived in terrror of their neighbouring villages liable to attack at any time. This terror of space was ended when civilization ceased the fear that the next town over might attack. The fear was then attached to time, and people focused on the fear of the future, so religions developed to sell them insurance to offset the risk of future catastrophe.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution has nothing to do with the purpose of life. The purpose of life is for you to determine yourself.

Believing in evolution doesn't say that you think a cold random chance universe created it, why do you think an almighty power couldn't create a system like this?

At its heart evolution really just describes common sense. Organisms with genes that code for beneficial adaptations will be more likely to survive and reproduce. Therefore, those genes will get in to a larger and larger amount of the population over time. It's no different than diffusion describing how gases mix together. It gives no attribution to how the system of genetics and reproduction came in to being in the first place. I think most people's problems with evolution is the failure to grasp how one species can "evolve" into a totally new and very different looking species. Here's a hint, a bird didn't suddenly hatch out of a lizard egg. Over millions of years and hundreds of thousands of generations tiny, seemingly insignificant changes all were steps to get from species A to species B.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Empiric]

It would be called "science" by people like you, who fail to understand that nothing in science is "proven", it is a collection of models that are always provisional and permanently open to revision based on future data.

Still, say, one's preferences in art... do you object that those aren't "proven" and therefore aren't "science"--and what do you conclude from that?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Empiric]

But if you truly feel there is a god, then obviously your sense of reality is wrong and this is what psychosis is about.

Back your absolutely nonsensical arbitrary claim here.

Saccadic movement necessary for perception

[Anonymous Coward]

Without this small oscillation of eyeballs images would be stabilized on the retina and thus fade and eventually disappear. Or reappear when unnecessary. The author of the linked article doesn't mention this fact, but it was discovered by a Soviet scientist in the 1960s and at the time was considered controversial.

24 fps is the speed at which the film travels through the "gate" (mechanical or electronic). When projected for viewing the frame rate is bumped up (progressively) to 50 fps, which is more than adequate to interpret the image.

I'm wondering if whether this is really an of interlaced vs. progressive presentation. For video engineers, interlaced works somewhat more naturally for sports, where the camera and the principals are in constant motion.

At any rate, whatever Peter Jackson is doing with higher sampling is unnecessary and uncomfortable to watch for an extended time.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Triklyn]

science doesn't care about what is appealing but what is truth. a belief that does not bear on reality is also called a delusion. If the truth of the matter is that there is no life after death, and that human existence is a meaningless shamble across the pages of history, so be it. This is what is true, this is what is depressing, but this is what is true. I hold truth in higher esteem than i hold my own sense of wellbeing.

I acknowledge that persistent after death is an appealing idea, but i am made so that i cannot believe. I would love to be religious, but i can't choose my belief, it follows the evidence because that's who I am.

the theory of evolution through natural selection is our best guess at what the truth is, and because it is heavily supported, i cannot believe anything else.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't disprove Pascal's wager. Pascal's wager is not a theorem to be proven, it's a probabilistic evaluation of believing in God or not. Your situation broadens it to have many different Gods with this constraint: If there is a God, it will be one, and only one, of the Gods.

Pascal would still say it makes sense to believe in God. A non-believer gains some in their life by not making religious sacrifices in time, effort and money with the downside risk that they are wrong and have an afterlife that is less than ideal. A believer in one of the Gods makes a sacrifice in their life by believing and attending services, etc. for the upside of eternal happiness in the afterlife IF they picked the right God.

The only way to get the infinite upside possibility is to believe in a God and hope it was the right one. The upside for picking the correct God is so enormous that it dwarfs any risk (per Pascals hypothesis that the afterlife was an infinitely positive upside). If there is no way to determine which one is correct, than randomly picking one is fine. Pascal would still have concluded the best course of action is to believe in God. Since he would have been predisposed to favor the Christian God and had no evidence to indicate a different God was the true supernatural power, he would have believed in Christianity.

Pascal's wager has been criticized by many over the years as no proof of anything at all. It is just his position on which "bet" to make with your life.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[William Baric]

You don't make any sense. I don't claim anything, I just follow the definition of the word "psychosis".

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[William Baric]

I conclude you're a nutcase! Seriously, you don't make any sense.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Triklyn]

i didn't read your post very carefully, but one point. eyewitness testimony is incredibly shaky. We take videos because we can't trust our eyes, we have mass-spec because we can't perceive atoms, and we don't trust our noses, we have microphones because we can't trust our ears and our ears have crappy range. We have clocks because our sense of time is subjective and can be influenced neurochemical releases...

We don't trust our measurements because people are fallible, we have error bars because the universe is kinda random and extremely complex.

Someone says they had an out of body experience. I dreamed i was flying in my youth too, when you're on the edge of consciousness, lots of things can happen, and the brain is pretty damn complex.

You toss a powerful magnet at a brain and you can shut off emotions, shut off senses, distort them and induce them... what makes you think the brain dying is any less traumatic than changing the flow of electricity in one portion?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Empiric]

1. Your definition of "psychosis" is wrong. Check the DSM, or any actual professional in the field, that is, what science says.

2. There is nothing "obvious" about the notion there is not a God, feel free to share the special insight you have superseding thousands of years of theology, philosophy, and science demonstrating clearly it is not "obvious".

3. Even if it were "obvious", the notion it is therefore "psychosis" is nonsense. Once can name innumerable instances of something being claimed to be "obvious" for which disregarding it is not "psychosis"--say, choosing to drink and drive despite the consequences. Say, buying overpriced products. Say, being Republican or Democrat, viewed from the other side.

In short, you are being irrational. In short, something is indeed wrong here with mental functioning. The person exhibiting this would be you.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Empiric]

You toss a powerful magnet at a brain and you can shut off emotions, shut off senses, distort them and induce them... what makes you think the brain dying is any less traumatic than changing the flow of electricity in one portion?

I made no claim it is less traumatic. What is relevant is the high specificity of the results of the trauma, as quantified by the study. If the perceptions were random, say in the case of LSD, hitting someone in the head repeatedly with a rock, or random magnetic stimulation, I would agree the evidence would be very weak. They are not random. They correlate strongly with exactly what the religion predicts.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[SillyHamster]

If religious people had any proof, it would no longer be religion. Of course they don't, because the supernatural is imaginary.

I assume you have proof of this? Care to share?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Livius]

If Christianity is true, then does that mean all the ancient Mediterranean religions that it plagiarized are also true?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Empiric]

Do I explain "citing primary sources" or "post hoc ergo propter hoc" first?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Empiric]

Eh forget it. With the complete failure of Slashdot metamoderation and the increasing blatant intellectual dishonesty of the mods here, Slashdot has become worthless for useful discussion.

Merry Christmas, all.

framerates, and why 29.97 came about

[k6mfw]

I say the human eye does see more than 24 fps, pan your head back and forth, no blurring like you get panning a camera. OK so I haven't RTFA but I recently read/search info on framerates. From what I gather 24 fps came about from movies particularly when the talkies became standard for motion pictures. What they settled on enough fps to have smooth action and matching audio but not too much as film is/was very expensive. But each frame is shown twice (refresh rate in the movie theatres is 48 Hz). I read 24 fps is needed so brain perceives as smooth motion but need to show each one twice to remove flicker effect. Those 16mm and silent films were less fps but not as cinema quality of major motion pictures.

Anyone have comments or corrections, jump in as many times I feel as if I'm still trying to figure out what and why of fps and refresh rates.

Then television came along, first 60 fps seems good (match with powerline freq) but too much bandwidth so they make it 30 fps but to reduce flicker, they did interlace. Framerate has smooth motion and interlace does the refresh rate like motion picture showing each frame twice. Then color TV comes along but as OTA bandwidth was fixed, they reduce framerate a little to 29.97 to insert chroma signal.

Then computers came along, why not use same CRTs as TV sets, so their framerate was 29.97 (but many simply rounded off to 30 when writing or talking about framerates). Then the flatscreens (VGA monitors) came along but used 29.97 to be compatible with existing computers, but refresh rate is 60 Hz to not have flicker effect. Gamers wanted higher framerates so 60 fps but I think it really is 59.94 fps.

I did some different FPS exercises with a CRT monitor and a Canon EOS camera. I set Canon to 30 fps (actually it is 29.97) and connected the video output to the monitor. I panned camera back and forth including viewing monitor. I did the same with Canon at 24 fps, there was noticable blurring or choppy on monitor when I panned camera back and forth. Viewing monitor with camera I can see those rolling bars like you see in the movies with TV set in background (aha, so that's what the 24/30 fps mismatch is). I set camera to 60 fps (actually 59.94), it seemed smoother view when panning back and forth though monitor is fixed 30 fps.

For many people, so what. However, I was looking at various cameras and spec sheets list framerates of 23.97, 24, 29.97, 30, 59.94, 60.... what's with all these variations? I don't think a camera can be set to exactly 30. Or is it sales and marketing people insists on lots more numbers for the spec sheets?

Human eye sees WAY more.

[Khyber]

'It should be safe to conclude that humans can see frame rates greater than 24 fps."

We can go even faster than that.

While this video I just shot won't show it very well due to FPS limitations, you can easily perceive much faster than anyone here assumes. In the frequency range I'm playing in, you've got THOUSANDS of hertz in difference on some of these notes. The LED setup makes it REALLY easy to see in real time.

Re:Human eye sees WAY more.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you know the frequency of the notes you're playing.

E 82.41 Hz
A 110.00 Hz
D 146.83 Hz
G 196.00 Hz
B 246.94 Hz
E 329.63 Hz

...and then each octave higher merely doubles the frequency, thus even 12 frets out on the high E you're still below 1000 Hz.

Also, the flashing you see isn't the difference between the notes. That's the result of when they become in-phase with each other vs. canceling each other out. E.g., with 200 Hz + 600 Hz, the phase is going to remain constant, thus a flash rate of 0 Hz, but then if you detune to 200 Hz + 599 Hz, you're going to see one cycle of the 599 Hz waveform "flow over" the peak in the 200 Hz waveform each second, and thus you'll see a pulse of 1 Hz, even though the difference between the frequencies is 499 Hz.

That said, we certainly can see more than 24 FPS. Just compare 60 Hz on a modern LCD monitor to 100 Hz on an old CRT monitor. The difference is absolutely amazing, and so even 60 FPS isn't the limit of what we can perceive, even if we can't possibly see every detail of every frame.

Re:Human eye sees WAY more.

[Khyber]

I don't think you know anything about overtones and harmonics. Go ahead, run your guitar through a spectral analyzer. I'll be waiting here.

Re:Human eye sees WAY more.

[Khyber]

Oh, to boot, I can hit A8 on my guitar fretboard. That's 7,000+ Hz.

Re:Human eye sees WAY more.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I know all about overtones and harmonics, but that they just aren't relevant to the discussion. Do you really think that there's a 10 Hz signal and a 1000 Hz signal being sent to those LEDs and you're seeing the 1000 Hz signal and not the 10 Hz signal when you see them flashing? People can see 10 Hz, they can't see 1000 Hz, so that 1000 Hz is in there too is irrelevant.

Re:Human eye sees WAY more.

[Anonymous Coward]

And supposedly the brain operates at around 11Hz, which would make one wonder how we're able to perceive things faster than that per second, hearing.

Oh, and we see multiple Terahertz of light. What do you think the visible wavelength is?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

Science also doesn't have proof. What science has is falsifiability.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

Belief requires faith. Smart or not!! until proven everything is conjecture/theory. I kinda feel that way about string theory, but that's probably because i am not so smart. Facts are disputed as belief, and that's mostly being closed minded and nothing to do with smarts.

True faith, as required by religion, is wanting to not to know the facts.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

But, "proof" (clever of you to goalpost-shift this up front to a criteria virtually nothing, including science, can meet, by the way) would be tantamount to worldwide forced conversion. You'd either have to accept it, or go to an asylum for denying basic proven facts. Might you see a reason a God would not want that, particularly in this era of global communication?

Your god doesn't like black people?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Brulath]

Few people would be convicted in a court of law based upon testimony alone — it's the weakest form of 'evidence' possible. "They said so therefore true!" is not an acceptable form of evidence when you're describing a concept that governs everything in the universe (and apparently outside it, whatever that entails). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Re: The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can show me a significant number of people that had these visions that had exactly ZERO prior knowledge of what religion predicts, I might believe it. Otherwise all it does is to show that the brain can mix up things you've stored in there if things get disrupted near death.

Nyquist?

[thogard]

The ear follows the rules Nyquist created about sample rates (i.e. there are hairs in your ear that are turned to hear 40 kHz but you can't hear that high). There is no reason the eye can't be doing the same thing.

Referring to games or video?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I can damn well assure you there is a huge difference between 30 FPS and 300+ FPS.

OK, I play twitch games but this is where it matters. It's not about what the eye can perceive but about the physical interaction and muscle training. Our brains/muscles/whatever react and control much more accurately than even a game at 300 FPS can simulate. To restrict us to artificial eye-visual frame rates is stupid.

While we're on the topic. How about more fluid games? iD/Carmark got it right. Smooth, fluid, natural gameplay. Nowadays all we get is the stiff robotic games that feel like shit. What the hell people, can you seriously not tell the difference? All you want is awesome graphics with crap feel? Kids are so stupid. We have been through this already, dammit.

48 fps may be TOO clear?

[MtViewGuy]

I think the problem is that because we're so used to 24 fps on theatrical motion pictures, going to 48 fps can be quite jarring, since everything looks so much "clearer" that you have to rethink set design, costume design and even the use of special effects to be less obtrusive at 48 fps. (Indeed, this became a huge issue with Peter Jackson's "Hobbit" trilogy because everything looked TOO clear.)

The late Roger Ebert liked the 48 fps "Maxivision" analog film format, but that idea never took off due to need to use a lot more physical film and the increased stress of running a film projector at twice the speed of regular projectors. But with modern digital movie cameras, 48 fps is now much more viable.

120hz tvs

[rsilvergun]

make movies look like they were shot on a daytime TV cam to me. I saw Braveheart on one of those modern tvs and I suppose the lighting was more natural, but it was considerably less dramatic. It just killed it for me. Also (and this is mostly just me) I can perceive noticeable drops in framerate on those newer tvs. The rate goes up and down like crazy. Drives me nuts.

Re:120hz tvs

[meustrus]

120hz tvs make movies look like they were shot on a daytime TV cam to me.

That's what I remember being the original complaint: higher FPS looks like daytime TV (or home video). That's an understandable prejudice, but one that I think we can get over by watching more normal TV in higher FPS. For some reason though, after the initial wave of honest people like you there's been hack after hack trying to explain why low FPS is actually better for smarter sounding reasons. It hasn't exactly been great for the TV industry; real 120 hz isn't as available in mid-range TVs as it was a couple of years ago. The hack reviewers convinced us that better technology is not worth paying for, and now instead the upper part of the market is about "Smart" TVs. How exactly is it "smart" to pay several hundred dollars more for your TV to have a built-in Roku/Apple TV/Chromecast/Fire Stick that you now have to choose in a package with the picture quality instead of being able to choose a good (or cheap) TV and separately choose the interface you like best? Especially since most external options also have additional content networks you can buy into?

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

You toss a powerful magnet at a brain and you can shut off emotions, shut off senses, distort them and induce them... what makes you think the brain dying is any less traumatic than changing the flow of electricity in one portion?

I think if you toss anything at a brain you can do the same thing. It's called concussion :-)

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

well the scrotum is proof god doesn't exist. Seriously bad design. Why isn't it protected by a bone plate thicker than my skull?!

Edison won the 24 gps standard

[Anonymous Coward]

The competition was 16 fps which would have been 33% cheaper to film.
Edison sold film supplies in those days.

Re:Edison won the 24 gps standard

[zippthorne]

If 16 fps was acceptable to audiences, then it would have won. Edison wasn't some kind of irresistible force - he couldn't keep the country from using AC, for instance, and where he was able to establish DC, DC actually made sense.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[pupsocket]

I'd rather bet on a .001% chance that Jesus is Lord than 99.999% chance that life is based on nothing but random chance and death.

Most sperm get a brief swim and that's it.

Your chance of becoming the Messiah are millions of times greater than one sperm's chance of fulfilling its purpose.

Still, most sperm are dedicated to a sense of purpose. That purpose is to be absorbed by a larger cell and trigger the well-programmed growth of a new organism.

Of course, as your yourself are the rare result of a successful sperm, you discount the role of randomness and believe that life has purpose.

Why not?

We are only one generation away from Google Contact Lenses.

Haptic underwear.

Intracranial modems.

Broadband cochlea replacements.

At that point most of will be sensible only to the internal signalling of the larger organism of which we will be but cells.

DNA, against all odds, will have made it past evolution all the way to Intelligent Design.

Of course, eventually -- or perhaps soon, or maybe even now -- we will be a mere organ in the anatomy of a superintelligent intergalactically networked individual.

And what will our role be? Perhaps we will be a remote scouting organ on the lookout for even larger creatures that want to consume us. Or it.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[morgauxo]

Wow! Really? So you have invented a senario that completely discounts the suffering of a whole lot of innocents just because it fits better with your worldview? Do you have any idea how offensive that is? Would you tell that to those children's parents?

"Don't worry, your kid didn't really suffer cause my god would not allow that. Everything is just A O K! :-D"

If you see someone suffering and dying then the safest guess as to what is happening is somebody is actually suffering and dying. Maybe if someone came back from the dead and said.. "don't worry, it didn't really hurt" or maybe if someone attached an EKG machine and determined nothing was going on in the brain then you might have a point. Until then you are just denying the reality that is plainly before your face. There is no way you can ever know truth that way.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[morgauxo]

If testimony proves anything then a lot of contradictory religions, stories that outright say each other are not true are somehow all true. Likewise are alien abductions, bigfoot, the loch ness monster and a nearly unlimited number of other things.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[morgauxo]

Evolution has no practice and I really doubt anyone feels down on themselves because of it so this must be about religion.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[morgauxo]

"but we're the same petty beings we were 6,000 years ago"

Of course our species has not changed in a mere blink of the evolutionary timescale.

Yes, we could blow ourselves up today. But.. our species has survived an ice age as well as many other major climate shifts. We have survived population bottlenecks where we WERE a small, conveniently tiny target. We interbred a little and took on some useful genes from a few related species shortly before they went extinct. We outlasted them all.

That sounds like reason for hope to me!

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[sholden]

Given the first word is "whereas" it's stating the opposite of the post it is replying to.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Anonymous Coward]

But you can equally say that the 'true god' might "punish" atheists by simply denying them eternal bliss (i.e. they die, they are gone) whereas he might punish believers in 'false gods' by eternal torment. In that case, the best bet is not to believe in any God, since non-existence is better than eternal torment. So there is no way to determine whether believing is the best or worst thing to do, and you might as well follow the evidence or your instincts or whatever satisfies you.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[morgauxo]

LOL, just because people are capable of building a "nuclear something" does not make them a threat! The only nuclear reactor anyone has ever made in their workshop is a Farnsworth Fusor. Granted, there is some potential for harming oneself when using such a device if one doesn't know what they are doing but it is about as dangerous to the world as just another garage power tool.

The only device capable of being an existential threat to humanity is a thermonuclear bomb. Making one of those requires concentrations of specific rare isotopes. It takes the resources of a nation state to produce that. Not your geeky neighbor! There are not 10s of thousands of people with access to those resources, only a handful with access to nuclear weapons and of those maybe 3, the US, China and Russia with the ability to actually kill the whole planet. Those three may not like each other much but they are not crazy enough to kill themselves.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Triklyn]

:P the point being that you can do it repeatedly and toggle it like a switch :)

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[Triklyn]

you run into the issue of causation too. do we really believe that people didn't have near death experiences until the advent of modern medicine? your life flashing before your eyes is something apparently common enough to turn into a saying and something people apparently experience when confronted by imminent mortality. no religious connection, extremely specific perceptual footprint. probably a combination of adrenaline and pants-shitting terror.

night terrors and alien abduction, extremely specific, widely reported, no religious connection.

out of body experience, tunneling vision, light at the end of the tunnel... not truly different from the aforementioned, but definitely something that might have been incorporated into religious texts.

i wasn't saying the trauma of imminent brain death is random, i was saying it was traumatic. It might be traumatic in largely the same way for most people in fact.

Re:The human eye is proof God exists

[rubycodez]

You are wrong and have the psychosis known as religion, you have a serious problem that has caused misery for mankind.

loss of contact with reality that usually includes: False beliefs, delusions, about what is taking place or who one is. Seeing or hearing things that aren't there, sensory hallucinations.