Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: Recognising people at a distance...

I was just wondering, how far do you think you have to be from a person before it becomes difficult to determine who they are? Like, if you're a certain distance away, maybe twenty or twenty-five feet, do you think you could say without a doubt that a person is definitely so-and-so (whoever...)? If twenty-five feet isn't far enough to not be able to have some doubt about recognising a person, how far do you think would be far enough?

I realise that this is a bit of a weird question, but any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

~Anna.

hmmm
sure is a "weird" question
particularly as you are on this side of the pacific and those of us in Australasia tend to use Metric measurements, not empirical....


but I guess the answer would tend to depend on the individual's visual acuity... a short sighted person would have much greater difficulties..


other than that, I cannot help you
I would say it would also depend on the angle of sight, with differing amounts of similariies between the objects/people seen/thought to be seen

I might add that it depends on how well you know the person you try to recognize. I'm near sighted, not bad, but it's enough to reduce the distance in which I can see perfectly clear to less than a yard. And that's the effect of just - 1,5 dpt.

Nevertheless I can recognize my father from a much greater distance (more than 100 yards, I'd guess) That's because I don't need to see his face to know it's him. Okay, granted, I knew he had to come along the way, sooner or later.

So I'd say that an ability to recognize a person depends on how well you know him or her. Do you expect to see him or her?

Oh, and of course you could calculate. A normal sighted human eye can discern two spots that are at least one arc minute apart from each other. But I don't know how many features you'd need to see seperately to recognize a person.

There's more to just recognizing their face, I would say -- there's recognizing their walk, their clothes, the way they move about... I'm really very near-sighted, but even with my glasses off, I could recognize a person I know well if they were walking on the sidewalk towards me. Of course if they're 100 feet away, I won't even see them there, but I mean, I don't need to be able to see the face clearly in order to know who it is that's standing there.

Then again, perhaps the fact that I am near-sighted forces me to unconsciously notice these things...? I know that I use other senses to compensate for this deficiency for sure -- my hearing is more developed, for example and I could recognize you by the sound you make when you walk if you were walking behind me. Not on the street, obviously since there's too much noise there, but inside the office let's say, if there's someone following me, I can tell who it is without looking.

Hope this helps a little.

It really depends on how well you know the person - finding someone from just a photograph - depending on your visual acuity they may have to be fairly close. But if you know the walk, the body language - down the block or across the street or farther is very likely. In college I could spot my boyfriend in a crowd across Red Square (which was red but wasn't square and was VERY large). I can spot my husband (same fellow) across a Best Buy by just spotting the top of his head - okay he has a rather reflective head, but still...

And if the person spotted is expected to be there, it's that much easier.

Saw a stand-up comic on TV a few days ago. Of Korean descent, but raised in the south (I missed the part where he said where, but it was definitely "y'all" territory).

He said his father was the only Korean in the whole town, so he had no trouble spotting his dad at any distance or in any crowd.

Then they took a trip to Korea. Lost him in five minutes, and couldn't find him for three hours...

So, yeah. Depends on a lot of things. Your vision. How well you know the person. How distinctive the person's looks are. How surprised you'd be to see that person in that context. How alert you are. What the person is wearing. How long it's been since you last saw the person. Which way the person is facing. How much you can see. How many other people are around. How good your pattern-matching skills are. How different the person is from the rest of the crowd. Whether or not the person is wearing glasses.

Could be inches. Could be fifty feet. Could be more.

If I'm in Metropolis and I see a brightly-colored person-shaped dot hanging in mid-air half a mile away, I don't think it'd be too hard to guess...

On the other hand, that dark-haired fellow in the glasses slouching by the lamppost...

Thanks guys, that does help. To clarify, I'm thinking of a person who has twenty-twenty vision recognising someone else at a distance (from a window high up in a warehouse wall...).

And beethoven? To make me not sound so weird, I was asking in feet, not metres, because I'm writing about LnC and they're in the USA...

Now, because of converting the distance from feet to metres (which I understand and can picture a heck of a lot better), I'm going to up my distance to 50 feet...

~Anna.