This striking optical illusion makes a well known industrial building in Ontario look at lot larger than it actually is.
Situated in Port Colborne, Ontario and dating back 100 years, the mill only started to gain attention relatively recently when people started noticing something distinctly odd about its size.
If you happen to be approaching the mill from one particular direction, from a distance it looks as though the mill is absolutely gigantic with its hulking shape dominating the horizon.
As you drive closer, however, the mill seems to get smaller and smaller, taking up less and less of the horizon until, upon reaching the water, it appears relatively small and far off in the distance.
This optical illusion is so striking that some visitors have taken to turning around and experiencing it a second time, just to make sure that they weren't imagining things.
In reality, the reason that the mill appears so large from further away is down to a trick of perspective with the trees and the angle of the road adding to the effect.
You can check it out for yourself in the video below.
The object is at the "vanishing point", was my guess, and I got it right! (It's true that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn occasionally) "An object's apparent size diminishes as you approach it from the vanishing point due to the principles of linear perspective and how our eyes perceive depth. As an object moves further away, the angle it subtends on our retina (visual angle) decreases, causing it to appear smaller. This is because the object occupies a smaller portion of our field of vision."
Ouija, the "vanishing point" is where, when looking down a linear perspective, like a road while you are driving, the VP is where everything in your field of vision seems to come to a point on the horizon. Usually it will appear like all of the trees or bodies of water seem to draw together to a single point. This mill at the end of a road became that point for those driving down that road, and as people got closer, they could see the actual size because the optical illusion wasn't effective any longer.
This is the same thing as when people photograph the sunset they are nearly always disappointed with the picture versus what they see with their eyes (and how the brain interprets it.
This is not even worth even an upload. Obviously the mill is not getting any smaller, in fact as they are driving closer the mill is slightly bigger and more clear/sharper to see on the vid. The "illusion" would be the straight road with the trees, creating like tunnel like exit. As you are getting to the end you see more of the surroundings which appears the mill to be shrinking. But honestly if any adult find this to be some weird anomaly should no have a driving license.
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