3D Visualization - Our Perceptual Super Power

Aristotle once said: ‘Thought is impossible without an image’. He was right, humans are highly visual creatures, and we think best when we can picture the subject of our thoughts. The visual cortex is the largest single system in the human brain, 50% of our nerve fibres are associated with vision and it accounts for two thirds of the brain’s electrical activity.

Not only are we highly visual creatures, evolution has ensured that we are primarily 3D visual creatures.

Why do we favour 3D images?

Vision emerged as a capability some 545 million years ago in the Cambrian Explosion. Our sea-creature ancestors developed the ability to adapt their behaviour and increase their chances of survival based on visual cues from the world around them – a world they saw in 3D.

In contrast, abstract thought appears to have emerged around 70,000 years ago, writing around 3500 years ago, and virtual environments only really entered the mainstream in the last 20 years.

We have 545 million years of evolutionary history behind our ability to make sense of a physical 3D space, but only 0.00013% of that 545 million year period making sense of language, 0.000005% making sense of writing, and 0.000000036% making sense of the virtual world.

It should come as no surprise therefore that we have an enormous evolutionary sweet spot for intuitively making sense of a 3D physical space - Its our perceptual super power.

Speed up your understanding

Evolution has ensured we are adept at creating 3D mental models based on the 2D retinal images that hit the eyes, but we are not nearly as good at making sense of abstract information or 2D images and shapes. This is because in evolutionary terms, abstract informational formats have only been a part of our experienced reality for a very short time, as a result our brains have not evolved to interpret the abstract as efficiently as we can interpret the physical.

For example, look at the 3 images below, and as you do so try to pay attention to how much mental effort it takes to make sense of what you are looking at:

All three images contain broadly similar information (they ae describing the same building), but for most people the cognitive load associated with interpreting the 3D image is much lower, meaning they are quicker to comprehend that image. On average people make sense of the 3D image around 4x faster than they do the 2D image.

A 3D perspective is also a more efficient format for displaying information. Here you can see a simple cube displayed in three different formats: 2D, 3D and semi-transparent 3D:

The table shows how many of the total possible elements of the cube can be displayed. The 3D and semi-transparent 3D images provide the brain with more information (73% and 100% of the elements compared with just 34% from the 2D format). What this means is that 3D semi-transparent representation affords the viewer more information, thus allowing a more accurate and more detailed mental model to be constructed in the mind's eye of the viewer.

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