I was putting up some wall decorations earlier today and was painstakingly realigning everything until it looked level to my eyes. It might be just a hair off, but if I don’t correct it, I’ll see the misalignment almost instantly and get bothered for the rest of time until I fix it. Has anyone investigated, or is there literature on the minimum perceptible angle from level to the naked eye?
I once hung a TV level to Earth’s gravity. And then I found out that the floor and ceiling weren’t level, so the TV looked crooked anyways.
I recall a carnival-type installation, were a whole house was built at an angle, and at the end of it they had a water spigot they turned on, and the water flowed “uphill” (to the human eye).
I’ve been to one of these! There was a hill within the house that is way steeper than it looks and it was super freaky and disorienting. Just being in that place gave me motion sickness
Do you ever use a level to actually know it’s misaligned or do you just presume you immediately see all the misalignments?
I don’t know too much about this area, but I do know that this kind of task involves a bunch of complex processing in the brain. The more “Mechanical” aspects of vision could be described as visual acuity (sharpness of vision). However, gauging whether something is wonky would be a visual discrimination task, which involves more work by the brain. It’s an area in which one’s skill can be improved through learning, and some occupations have a lower discrimination threshold (I e. They can detect smaller differences).
If everything else is wonky then “level” looks wrong.
According to almost every photo I take, about 3 degrees off.
Pretty sure this is a psychophysics question, though I don’t know that field well enough to know what’s there.
depends HEAVILY on the eye. some folks are really good at eyeballing shit. usually this goes hand in hand with other “visual calculus” skills like telling whether two things are the same size or determining angles at a glance.
reckon it’s just spatial reasoning + visualization + practice. i had an uncle who could look at a mechanical system and tell you exactly where all the wear would occur. i always thought it was some kind of savant trick until i started working on similar stuff.
the brain is just another muscle, you can train it to so all sorts of really amazing things!
Your house isn’t level. Nobody’s is. Get it to look right and that’ll be good enough
I believe it depends on the environment.
Meaning crooked walls/ceiling/floor influence what we believe is visually straight.Yep, what we consider to be level is relative to what you use to establish an axial plane.
The earth was flat for quite a while so not very
That’s actually a pretty good question.
With no exact answer, I do think this will at least in part depend on relative comparison to how exactly level your floor/ceiling/counter/table or other frame of reference is, which itself might not be perfect.
Side note, basically every smart phone out there has orientation sensors, so it should be just as easy as downloading a Bubble Level app from the app store.
Since the imperfections of your room may make what looks level not perfectly level, I say don’t use a spirit level. You want it to look right.
Side note, basically every smart phone out there has orientation sensors, so it should be just as easy as downloading a Bubble Level app from the app store.
not when almost every phone has a camera bump, volume rockers and a power button.
i.e. no long flat sides, that still allow you to see the screen.
You do have a point, but most phones have one edge that doesn’t have any buttons, and most people have their phone in a case, which assuming it’s a proper fitting case, usually cancels out that camera bump issue and makes it sit properly flat on a table.
I haven’t
Bhad a case whichsisn’tdidn’t mirror the camera bump in a long while unfortunatelyDid your keyboard have a stroke? Haha, I more or less get you though.
different language auto-correct really didn’t help my inborn lack of spelling, and I (apparently) didn’t even glance back to check what I wrote.
I was a draftsman for 25 years. Don’t get me started.
Please do get started, sir!
I’m tired.
It depends on the distance to object. Also the distance between the object and something to compare it to.
I can’t find anything at all regarding discussion, study or opinions on the question but I can tell you that it depends on the person and most likely, they’re experience in working at leveling/setting plumb.
Having used levels(spirit, laser, etc.) for decades, I can set an object like a stud, header or a picture for my wife and often don’t need to move it after checking with a level but my wife will often notice that a group of items aren’t leveled the same on a wall but she won’t be sure which one is off. There will usually be a few adjustments to all of them before she’s happy.
Yes, some people naturally have better 3d spatial awareness. You can also train your eyes to be better over time. I work in orthotics and prosthetics and have to sculpt positive models of different body parts. We also have to do GAIT analysis where we have to observe the angle of different joints while a patient ambulates.
Some people are just better at it than others starting out, especially if they have prior similar experience. I teach a lot of residents and have noticed that students that have a background in art or construction tend to have a better eye for angles. A lot of it is just practicing by observing different angles compared to something that is known to be square.
I have also trained people who never seem to be able to improve their ability to see angles, which is a big hindrance in their careers. A lot of schools actually have students take a spacial awareness test before students begin studying in the field.
