2.5D

2.5D (basic pronunciation two-and-a-half dimensional) perspective refers to gameplay or movement in a video game or virtual reality environment that is restricted to a two-dimensional (2D) plane with little to no access to a third dimension in a space that otherwise appears to be three-dimensional and is often simulated and rendered in a 3D digital environment.

This is similar but different from pseudo-3D perspective (sometimes called three-quarter view when the environment is portrayed from an angled top-down perspective), which refers to 2D graphical projections and similar techniques used to cause images or scenes to simulate the appearance of being three-dimensional (3D) when in fact they are not.

By contrast, games, spaces or perspectives that are simulated and rendered in 3D and used in 3D level design are said to be true 3D, and 2D rendered games made to appear as 2D without approximating a 3D image are said to be true 2D.

Common in video games, 2.5D projections have also been useful in geographic visualization (GVIS) to help understand visual-cognitive spatial representations or 3D visualization.[1]

The terms three-quarter perspective and three-quarter view trace their origins to the three-quarter profile in portraiture and facial recognition, which depicts a person's face that is partway between a frontal view and a side view.[2]

  1. ^ MacEachren, Alan. "GVIS Facilitating Visual Thinking." In How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design, 355–458. New York: The Guilford Press, 1995.
  2. ^ Liu, C (February 2002). "Reassessing the 3/4 view effect in face recognition". Cognition. 83 (1): 31–48(18). doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(01)00164-0. PMID 11814485. S2CID 23998061.