How to interpret the difference in height between two people in this Ames room?

[zenterix]

Homework Statement: From a description of the photo below, the woman on the left is actually taller than the boy on the right.
Relevant Equations: This is a so-called "Ames room" and has been constructed to eliminate the usual monocular depth cues that our eyes use to determine distance based on one eye only.

Here is the photo of the room

I cannot understand how it can be that she is taller.

In terms of the number of floor tiles, she seems to be just one tile further away from us and each tile is not that long.

There is something weird going on with the wall at the back of the room.

When I look at the lighting on the wall, it looks like the wall behind the woman is behind the wall with the painting and the wall behind the boy is in front of the wall with the painting.

On the other hand, looking at where the walls meet the tiles, it looks like both walls behind the people are in front of the wall behind the painting.

The side walls are also peculiar. It seems like the wall on the left-hand side is taller than the wall on the right-hand side when we look at just the walls. Then again, using the back wall both walls seem to have the same final height.

What gives?

 

[Lnewqban]

Are you familiar with Ames rooms?
If not, please see:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_room

If yes, note how the reflections on the floor do not converge towards the observer (you), as in a normal perspective.

The the frame of the picture located on the back wall is not perfectly rectangular, but as your line of vision has been artificially moved to the left, it looks rectangular.

 

[Lord Jestocost]

Homework Statement: From a description of the photo below, the woman on the left is actually taller than the boy on the right.
Relevant Equations: This is a so-called "Ames room" and has been constructed to eliminate the usual monocular depth cues that our eyes use to determine distance based on one eye only.

Here is the photo of the room

View attachment 352390

I cannot understand how it can be that she is taller.

In terms of the number of floor tiles, she seems to be just one tile further away from us and each tile is not that long.

There is something weird going on with the wall at the back of the room.

When I look at the lighting on the wall, it looks like the wall behind the woman is behind the wall with the painting and the wall behind the boy is in front of the wall with the painting.

On the other hand, looking at where the walls meet the tiles, it looks like both walls behind the people are in front of the wall behind the painting.

The side walls are also peculiar. It seems like the wall on the left-hand side is taller than the wall on the right-hand side when we look at just the walls. Then again, using the back wall both walls seem to have the same final height.

What gives?

The Ames Room presents the viewer with what appears to be a rectangular room with parallel walls and floors when viewed monocularly from one vantage point. On the homepage of the “Project Lite” from the Boston University you find a DIY “Ames Room Demonstration” under the link “LITE Inkjet Science”: https://www.bu.edu/lite/inkjet-science/index.html

 

[Andy Resnick]

What gives?

There's a fantastic book "Basic Vision: an introduction to visual perception" that has a whole chapter devoted to how our brain extracts 3-D information based on visual cues and provides many examples of optical illusions that exploit this (the Ames room illusion is one).

 

[Baluncore]

The the frame of the picture located on the back wall is not perfectly rectangular, but as your line of vision has been artificially moved to the left, it looks rectangular.

The viewer's brain assumes everything in the room is rectangular, but nothing in that room is rectangular.