The Parallax View Free Online

[Adimar Poynter]

Philosopherand cultural critic Slavoj Zizek has been called the Elvis of contemporary intellectuals more than once. After all, not only can he boast a publication and speaking record that should make him the envy of every academic in the Western world, but he has recently been the star of an eponymous titled documentary (2005's Zizek!) and laid down several commentary tracks on the DVD release of Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men (2006). Indeed, while Zizek's name certainly holds a prominent place in the philosophy section at your local bookstore, it is not limited to it.

A parallax gap for Zizek is a "confrontation of two closely linked perspectives between which no neutral common ground is possible." (4), or what we might call the minimal difference between two incommensurable points-of-view. For instance, one of the problems that has sustained constant interest in philosophy of mind as well as the various scientific approaches to understanding the mind is the notion of the explanatory gap. A neuroscientist may be able to offer an exhaustive account of what happens in my mind (what areas of the brain light up with activity etc) when I eat a piece of delicious cake. I cannot help but think though, that she is missing the point. What the neuroscientist misses in her account of my experience of eating is precisely the experience itself: the first-person phenomenal sensation of actually eating the cake. When it comes down to offering the "best" description of how the mind works I can either buy the objective map the neuroscientist presents me with or the subjective qualitative account that I immediately experience, but it seems impossible to assert the primacy of one without dismissing the other. That is, for Zizek there is no way for the two perspectives to meet in any fashion that still preserves what remains essential to both. In short, the parallax gap.

As I mentioned above, the parallax gap functions as more of a thematic glue than as a central organizing principle. While Zizek takes pains to at least briefly highlight the parallax gap in each of the various discussions, the book itself does not systematically build from gap to gap, but instead zigs and zags from parallax to parallax. While such an approach gives each section of the book a certain freshness (where is the gap going to pop up?) it also represents its greatest weakness. While each section is very interesting on its own, there is little connection between the different discussions. The whole book then comes off as a series of notes, as if Zizek was just jotting down different parallax gaps as he thought of them and never went back to provide any kind of flow among the different chapters. Moreover, while some sections emphasize and put their particular parallax gap at the center of discussion, others simply mention their gap and move on to other tangential topics that, while almost always fascinating, really detract from the unity of the book. In fact, the only reason I fail to offer a section-by-section account (besides the obvious fact it would make this review far too long) is that it would simply read more like a random bar conversation than a progressive argument. For instance, Zizek moves quickly through comments on the Freudian Death Drive to the parallax of Jesus as God and man, to an analysis of the late Johnny Cash song "When the Man Comes Around" (with all of the lyrics helpfully included) all in the space of three pages.

Despite the obvious structural flaws of The Parallax View it is still a worthwhile and oftentimes fascinating peek into contemporary cultural theory (perhaps its jumbled structure is a mirroring of present day Anglo-American culture). Zizek combines the insights of 19th century German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel with 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in many brilliant and oftentimes unexpected ways. While neither Hegel nor Lacan is exactly an easy read, Zizek manages to make their ideas quite accessible through a near endless series of pop culture examples. This is an accomplishment in itself and anyone wishing to familiarize themselves with either thinker can find a wealth of helpful philosophical hints in The Parallax View.

One of Louie Sellers' many talents, as a forward thinking UX designer, is his eye for interactions. Here in his online portfolio, he puts in a number of cool, attention grabbing visuals. First, there's the pen that uncaps and comes back together as you make your way from the top to the bottom.

Then there are parallax effects on each featured project. Hovering over a project fills out the outline with details and shifts the image, giving it a sense of three dimensionality. When foreground images move against a solid background color it makes them more prominent than when left static.

This wonderful homage to The Goonies, that loveable movie from the 80s, opens up with a stunning parallax that draws you into that familiar rocky Oregon coastline where the film takes place. This example of parallax doesn't involve too much complexity. By applying different speeds to the foreground and background images, and enlarging them a bit, this 3D effect grabs your attention.

While many restaurants throw up a basic restaurant website or rely on social media platforms to share their menu and business information, Dockyard Social goes beyond the bare minimum. The Scottish purveyor of comfort food and beverages packs various visual effects into their single page website, starting with header text in the hero section that breaks apart upon scroll.

Weglot expands the reach of Webflow, letting designers create multilingual sites without having to know another language. This gives you the opportunity to break the language barrier and design for clients around the world.With some of the best parallax effect storytelling and interactive elements like the prompt to click and break the language barrier, this site really keeps you scrolling.

Avenir Creative makes for the second entry on this list from web design studio Heco Partners. As soon as you start scrolling on the homepage, the text in the menu shifts to a 45 degree angle and spreads apart to make room for the Avenir logo to sit in the middle.

Creator Andreea Encutescu was intrigued by the interactions on the official Plink website and decided to re-create them in Webflow. Andreea rebuilt the site for educational purposes and even made the project cloneable for anyone who wants to experiment with it.

Agency In The Wild combines oversized text and slick scroll triggered animations for a stellar agency website. There's a novel user triggered parallax in the form of a shifting addition symbol, combined with a list of who they've worked with. Some of the best parallax effects serve no practical purpose, but make designs stand out. Plus, the large text encourages site visitors to keep scrolling to read more while the parallax effects deliver an intriguing user experience.

Parallax effects are a part of Interactions 2.0, so why not cover the history of web design that got us to this point by incorporating interactions, including parallax effects? This brief history of the web takes you through the invention of the internet through Interactions 2.0 with 90s web design throwbacks, horizontal parallax effects, and scroll-triggered animations.

I have a decent background in 3D graphics and programming, but I'm new to game development. I'm currently exploring different possibilities and I really want to make an RPG game. I was thinking about classic 2D isometric view, but I really love how Diablo 2 looks and feels to play.

My question is - how can I achieve Diablo 2's parallax effect? Everything looks hand drawn with baked lights and shadows and looks awesome, but when you move around you notice some perspective.

For example, let's say that I drew a big hall with columns in Photoshop with an orthographic perspective (classic pixel art style, just parallel lines). How would I give parallax effect to this scene when the character moves around? If I use camera-facing sprites for everything it would probably look OK in the distance, but it would be really fake when a character comes close to a column (cylinder) for example.

This is a long answer, but actually the basic premise of divide-by-camera-z is very simple: The further something is away from you, the smaller it appears. Also, the smaller distances between two things appear.

Play with the camera's z position until you see points being rendered. But what you will see is that the points will all display across the centreline of the screen. So we need to remedy that. Try K=1 vs. K=10 to see the difference.

You can now move the camera in y to see how your camera goes above and below the plane of points (i.e. the points will render, perspective-correct, below or above the midline of the screen, respectively, as you move the camera up and down).

These are very rough guidelines. There are several implementation details that will be up to you. The first step is just to get something displaying, then amend from there. One detail that comes to mind is that if you want to camera to look more like it's looking down at the ground, then you need to shift your rendering origin upward, closer to the top of the viewport. Another detail is that your distance between camera and point may need to include a trig ratio... I think using tan offers more realistic perspective. Don't remember clearly about this, but you will quickly see if the perspective looks strange and can adapt accordingly. I can't be more specific without rewriting a sample.

Now that you can see perspective amongst your set of point-positions, and can add, remove, or move (as with characters) positions at will, you need to also apply perspective to the individual sprites which will be rooted at those positions.

In D2, it always appeared to me to be a simple lateral warp function that is applied more to the billboards that are the bottom of the screen, than to those at the top, and also more as you get futher away from the midline running down the screen.

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