Technical details aren’t the most interesting things in the world. Therefore I will keep it low and easy on this one. Even if it is about some sophisticated Mathematics ...

 

Some posts ago I was talking about mirrors and the possibility they give in a game plot. Today I want to show you something different - but somehow still the same.

 

Take a look at the following screenshot

What you see is a small world containing a ball, a mirror and the reflection of the world. While this is well known to our eyes and does not call any irritations, the following picture might do at least to people that are not familiar with computer games, fictional books or movies

This looks very much the same as above (except the nice green), but you will have noticed that the reflection does not look quite like what we would expect it to. This screenshot shows a so called “Portal” through which one can go from one world into another. Or as in this case, go from one place to another in the same world without passing all the way between those places.

 

Now think about looking into a mirror in your bathroom and seeing something as shown here. You would be thinking that at least SOME things are going completely wrong ...

 

Well actually, you would not be right in the whole case, since technically it is very much the same! To make things easy: When looking into a mirror or a portal you are looking from somewhere else to another place. Always. Except that a mirror’s view matrix is static and always giving the result we would expect - a portal’s is not.

 

So much for the technical stuff today. Most things that look simple are in fact quite complicated to make it look simple. That is what we all know. But some things that look different from each other are in fact the very same. Think about it.