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Comment by oliveshell | Hacker News Reader

For me, the biggest issue with “virtual windows“ would be the lack of parallax. It would be very jarring to not see the view change as you move relative to the window.

They could implement head tracking to solve this, but that breaks down as soon as more than one person need to look through the same window.

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I don't think it would be a huge issue for the most part, simply because the parallax from your head movement is minimal due to the relatively long distance involved from the plane to the ground. Most of the parallax you'd experience in a plane would come from the plane's movement, which would be replicated due to the cameras' relative movement as well.

But the parallax is pretty huge from me to the window to the ground. If I lean forward, I can suddenly see a lot of ground I couldn't see before; if I lean back, I can see all the ground in front of the plane.

If you can see the wing, it's pretty close.

That said with some fairly simple optics you could give the "look" of parallax. There are a number of "3D like" lens solutions that go over high resolution screens to create different views at different angles, if they really wanted to go that way.

I'd say just make it look like you're going down a subway... passing trains and all!

Actually, the distance from the plane to distant objects exaggerates parallax. The closer an observer is to the window, the stronger the effect. Just like a really long lever.

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