I was putting up some wall decorations earlier today and was painstakingly realigning everything until it looked level to my eyes. It might be just a hair off, but if I don’t correct it, I’ll see the misalignment almost instantly and get bothered for the rest of time until I fix it. Has anyone investigated, or is there literature on the minimum perceptible angle from level to the naked eye?

  • over_clox@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    That’s actually a pretty good question.

    With no exact answer, I do think this will at least in part depend on relative comparison to how exactly level your floor/ceiling/counter/table or other frame of reference is, which itself might not be perfect.

    Side note, basically every smart phone out there has orientation sensors, so it should be just as easy as downloading a Bubble Level app from the app store.

    • blackbrook@mander.xyz
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      19 days ago

      Since the imperfections of your room may make what looks level not perfectly level, I say don’t use a spirit level. You want it to look right.

    • TheYang@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Side note, basically every smart phone out there has orientation sensors, so it should be just as easy as downloading a Bubble Level app from the app store.

      not when almost every phone has a camera bump, volume rockers and a power button.

      i.e. no long flat sides, that still allow you to see the screen.

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        You do have a point, but most phones have one edge that doesn’t have any buttons, and most people have their phone in a case, which assuming it’s a proper fitting case, usually cancels out that camera bump issue and makes it sit properly flat on a table.

        • TheYang@lemmy.world
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          18 days ago

          I haven’t Bhad a case which sisn’t didn’t mirror the camera bump in a long while unfortunately

            • TheYang@lemmy.world
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              18 days ago

              different language auto-correct really didn’t help my inborn lack of spelling, and I (apparently) didn’t even glance back to check what I wrote.

  • Bizzle@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    Your house isn’t level. Nobody’s is. Get it to look right and that’ll be good enough

  • davel@lemmy.ml
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    20 days ago

    I think it depends on 1) the person and 2) the context and 3) the desired precision. I would use an actual level to test against my intuition before I’d have confidence in it.

  • bobbyfiend@lemmy.ml
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    19 days ago

    According to almost every photo I take, about 3 degrees off.

    Pretty sure this is a psychophysics question, though I don’t know that field well enough to know what’s there.

  • AnarchistArtificer@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    I don’t know too much about this area, but I do know that this kind of task involves a bunch of complex processing in the brain. The more “Mechanical” aspects of vision could be described as visual acuity (sharpness of vision). However, gauging whether something is wonky would be a visual discrimination task, which involves more work by the brain. It’s an area in which one’s skill can be improved through learning, and some occupations have a lower discrimination threshold (I e. They can detect smaller differences).