First person shooters have been getting perspective wrong all along

pcgamer.com:

Linear perspective is the overarching method of representing 3D objects on a 2D plane, just like how games show up on your gaming monitor(opens in new tab). It encompasses the one, two, and three point perspectives you probably learned about in school, and has been the major leading perspectival schema in art since it's conception, way back in the fifteenth century. 

Now, Robert Pepperell of the Cardiff Metropolitan University in Wales (via New Scientist(opens in new tab)) is making us question everything we understand about how perspective should be represented in video games.

The current standard of linear perspective was developed by architect, poet, and humanist, Leon Battista Alberti. He's widely considered the father of Early Renaissance in the art world, and popularised the linear perspective techniques which are still used by architects and artists alike today (game artists included) when trying to capture accuracy and realism in a scene. 

If you're unfamiliar, it's a technique that gives the illusion of depth and volume as you draw parallel lines back from each corner of a 2D object to merge at certain points (the vanishing points); there's one vanishing point for one point perspective, two in two point perspective—you get the idea.

The alternative is non-linear perspective, which relies on atmospheric cues to relay depth, volume and position, such as colour value and different levels of detail depending on how far away an object is. This is something you'll see more in expressionist artwork, as it's more importance driven than about anatomical correctness.

Non-linear perspectives aren't a new thing for video games, either. Your first exposure to non-linear graphical projections(opens in new tab) might have been