Form shaping random motion
The movie clips pointed to on this page are composed of sequences of 25 uncorrelated images. When run they produce randomly distributed motion vectors but as you will see, the percept is structured. The research conducted with 10 frame versions of these patterns is described in
Ross, J., Badcock, D.R. & Hayes, A. (2000) Coherent Global Motion in the Absence of Coherent Velocity Signals. Current Biology, 10, pp 679-682.
The movies work best if the viewer loops the sequence continuously, the sequence is displayed rapidly and the viewing distance is approximately 2 metres. The optimal requirements are outlined in Ross, J., Badcock, D.R. & Hayes, A. (2000).
The motion vectors contained in these movies are random. The spatial structure varies. Random (top left), Rotary (top right), Radial (bottom left) and Spiral (bottom right) structures are presented. These sequences of uncorrelated images produce a percept of coherent flow when a the global spatial descriptor is common for each image in the sequence. The sequence with dot- pairs oriented randomly does not produce a globally coherent flow.
