John VaughanAnimation, films and television "work" exactly because we humans don't perceive the fact that the illusion of "lifelike" motion can be created from a succession of quickly changing still images.
Digital images - which were laughably crude, chunky and clunky only a few years ago - now far outstrip our perceptual threshold.
One of our first object lessons came with the making of computer-generated spaceflight sequences for "Star Wars". The visually crisp imagery moved right, but didn't look right until Industrial Light & Magic realized that they needed to smear the spaceships a little (kind of like the blurry moving image artifact you get in a still frame). Only then did we humans accept that the image was real.
And lets's not forget the other positive aspects of human frailty.
I've always enjoyed this story:
People were terribly upset with the slowness of the elevator service at a huge skyscraper. It was a major problem.
The building was gigantic, the technology was already operating at its absolute limits, it was impossible to re-engineer or re-design anything major, yet within a few days complaints about the slowness of elevator service disappeared completely!
The solution: Floor-to-ceiling mirrors were installed in the lobby.....
Never underestimate the power of human curiosity, self-absorbtion, misdirection, vanity, etc.
