A CASE STUDY ON HOW DISTANT TREES APPEAR TO BE MOVING IN THE SAME DIRECTION AS OUR RIDE
Omkar Devidas Kadam · International Journal of Engineering Applied Sciences and Technology · 2021
It is of common observation that, when we ride on a bus, train, or vehicle, the trees alongside seem to travel in the direction opposite to ours. This is on account of the relative motion between us and the trees. Interestingly, it is the motion of the trees that are far away from the road that appears strange. The trees that are far away when observed in the presence of other objects in the foreground almost give the illusion that they are moving along with us in the same direction of the ride. Realizing that not many people are aware of this illusion and hardly there is any illustration to explain it, in what follows, I discussed how this perception could be explained with the help of basic geometry and motion analysis. We refer to this illusion as ‘false relative motion’.