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Last Updated: Thursday, 11 June 2015 14:56

Written by Dr. Donald H. Mershon

Summary: Most people have noticed that airliners in the sky usually appear small and appear to travel slowly. This article summarizes the factors that result in such illusory observations. These include the critical error of under-perceiving the apparent distance, because of built-in perceptual biases and the lack of surrounding objects in an empty sky. The other illusions (the errors in both perceived size and perceived velocity) arise as a direct prediction from Gogel's phenomenal geometry. Many factors are described in more detail in other articles, to which links are provided.

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