Videos vs photos.

This page attempts to explain why our animations of the windfarm look quite different from the static photomontages that you might have seen at Eneco's exhibitions in February and March 2012, and the montages in NBDL's Community Consultation viewpoint visuals booklet (CCD) 2013. 

Movement.

Importantly, human vision is extremely sensitive to movement, yet this is completely missing in a static image of a windfarm. Our videos include the rotation of the blades and begin to give you a real impression of what a working windfarm would look like.

Turbine heights, number and wind speeds.

The upper limit of the windfarm's capacity is currently 970MW. Eneco's photomontages in the A3 fold-out booklet of the Feb 2012 exhibitions showed 200, 153m tall turbines, which are 24m shorter than the 194, 177m tall turbines in our current videos, or 47m shorter than the 122 200m 8MW turbines, so it is not surprising they looked somewhat different.

In Dec 2012, NBDL declared a maximum turbine height of 200m, so rotor diameters have now grown to be close to what we originally expected. 

Viewing distance.

NBDL's 2013 CCD viewpoint visuals booklet is designed to be viewed from 300mm, which we think is uncomfortably close and most people will instinctively view from approximately 500mm, thereby getting a false impression of the scene.

Eneco's 2012 exhibition A3 fold-out booklet of photomontages was also created to be viewed from 300mm distance. We think this is too close for public exhibitions for the following reasons

• it is difficult for some people to focus on the image,
  
• you have to shift your focus significantly as you look sideways along the image, which is unnatural for a distant view,
  
• your stereoscopic vision is giving you strong signals that you are looking at a small object up close, rather than a large object far away.
  

These factors combine to make the impression very different from that of a real life, distant view. Our videos largely avoid these problems as they are viewed from much further away.

We noticed that because the book was placed on a table about 730mm above the floor, most people viewed the images from standing eye-height without bending down to the correct viewing distance of 300mm. Obviously, this made the windfarm appear smaller than it should.

With our videos, we accept that there is a danger you sit too close to your screen, so please measure the scale bar at the bottom of the frame with a ruler and move back the correct distance!

In NBDL's Feb 2013 exhibitions, they addressed some of the deficiencies of the 2012 exhibitions by having larger panoramas on curved boards with a comfortable viewing distance.  However, these panoramas still did not accurately represent the perception of scale and distance of the scene as explained here.

Field of view.

Eneco's 2012 book of photomontages did present a wide field of view, and to a lesser extent, so does NBDL's 2013 CCD. Our videos show only a restricted field of view because your screen does not have enough pixels to show a wider field with sufficiently high detail. Even so, the resolution in our videos is not as good as your eye's resolution, so be aware that the turbines would be clearer in real life.  However, the videos do have a field that is about the size that humans concentrate on when looking at a scene, and panning across the view is our way of overcoming the limitations of the screen.

Basically, the videos show what you would see if the BBC filmed the windfarm and broadcast it to your TV at their best estimate of life-size.  The only difference is that we specify the viewing distance to ensure the scale is accurate.  You are already familiar with seeing subjects presented this way in countless TV programmes, so the absence of the wider surroundings does not seem odd.  Furthermore, most of you know the views in the videos from living in the area, so the overall context of the scene is already in your head.

We think the advantages of the videos far outweigh the restriction on field of view, but look at our videos, static images and the real view to get the best idea of what the windfarm would actually look like.

Contrast.

Even with proper lighting, a good glossy print cannot reproduce the contrast of real life (10:1 as opposed to over 1000:1). An electronic screen may not be as good as real life, but it is much better than a print (contrast in excess of 500:1 with many modern displays).

Distortion of the view.

There is a detailed explanation of the distortions inherent in wide-field panoramas on the photo-montages page.  Narrower field displays, like our videos, largely avoid this problem.

Image resolution.

Refer to photo-montages for a discussion on the relative merits of prints and electronic displays with regard to image resolution.