Plato's Cave: The Vergence Representation
The Vergence Representation
In a vergence representation radial distance from the observer to a
point in space is measured by the angle of vergence between the two
eyes of a binocular system looking at that point, i.e. close objects
have large vergence, while farther objects have smaller vergence.
This is a natural representation of depth in biological systems
because it corresponds directly to depth as measured by a binocular
system, and has the important property required for an internal
spatial representation, i.e. that all distances which are very great
are mapped to zero vergence, or perceptual infinity.
This means that the entire range of distance from the observer to
infinity is mapped to a finite range of vergence angles.
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