Dimensions of Perspective

Perspective Categories
A principal source or mode of a perspective process.
Perspective Visual Perspective (Type 1) Optical Perspective Technical Perspective
Natural
Perspective
Visual
Perspective
(Type 2 /
Retinal)
Graphical
Perspective
Mathematical
Perspective
Instrument
Perspective
Simulated
Perspective
New Media
Perspective
Analytical level
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Understanding the Visual World

The Perspective Research Centre (PRC) is the world’s leading institute devoted to the study of perspective. Built on more than 40 years of research, PRC unifies perspective knowledge across art, science and technology.

For more than five centuries, perspective has occupied a central place in art, optics, geometry, architecture, astronomy, surveying and representation. Today, its principles remain fundamental to photography, cinema, cartography, scientific imaging, computer graphics, visual perception, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and other technologies of vision.

Yet perspective has never been established as a distinct field of study. Its principles, terminology, types and phenomena remain scattered across disciplines, while important relationships are still poorly documented or understood.

PRC brings this knowledge together, resolves conflicting terminology, identifies errors and misconceptions, and develops a systematic account of perspective across its natural, visual, optical, geometrical and technical forms.

What is Perspective?

The term perspective is used in its visual, optical and spatial sense: how objects, spaces, views and images are seen, formed, measured and represented. It includes natural, graphical, mathematical, instrumental, simulated and digital forms—not opinions, attitudes or general points of view.

The familiar use of linear perspective in drawing is only one part of this much larger field. Perspective shapes how we see, image, represent, measure, model and understand spatial reality. Its principles extend across art, architecture, geometry, photography, cinema, scientific imaging, computer graphics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and robotics.

Perspective affects how we judge size, shape, distance, position and direction; interpret images and views; and design, navigate, measure and communicate spatial environments. Whether you seek a solution, clarity on a problem or a deeper understanding of perspective, you have come to the right place.

Open-Access Digital Materials

Perspective serves as an intellectual prism through which to explore vision, projection, perception and representation. It is a vast and complex subject, developed across many disciplines and documented in many forms, creating a dense web of facts, concepts, theories, methods, systems and phenomena. PRC is designed to make this complexity navigable, allowing the subject to be explored and used according to individual interests and purposes.

The aim of PRC is neither to reproduce this complexity without structure nor to simplify it at the expense of truth. Over more than 40 years, we have sought to organise the field into efficient structures for navigation, exploration and discovery. Readers can consult individual resources, follow connected pathways across the subject, or venture deeply into its labyrinths of knowledge to uncover new relationships, meanings and solutions.

The open-access digital materials below provide multiple routes into this wider body of knowledge.

Available to You Now — Free

Go Deeper with the Digital Dictionary

Explore PRC freely for discovery, learning and research. For greater theoretical depth, comprehensive explanations of perspective methods and technologies, and contemporary developments such as AI-generated images and views, go deeper with the Digital Dictionary — Subscription Edition: the complete, interconnected research edition, soon expanding into an illustrated, omni-linked resource with 400+ linked articles.

The first-ever Dictionary of Perspective offers a new understanding of what perspective is, how it works and why it matters across the visual arts, science and technology. Both an encyclopaedic reference and a theoretical map of the field, it defines perspective, identifies errors and inconsistencies, explains unresolved phenomena, and introduces 200+ concepts with far-reaching applications.

Explore the Digital Dictionary — Subscription Edition →

Start Here

Choose a starting point based on your interests and experience.

Kim Veltman’s SUMS Perspective Database

The PRC has inherited an important legacy in Kim Veltman’s work. In 2026 we restored one of his key digital systems, the SUMS Perspective Database.

What it is: a restored historical omni-linked knowledge system connecting books, people, subjects, places, classifications, artworks, page-level content and bibliographic sources through multiple routes of enquiry.

Restoration status: the surviving database has been restored and validated, preserving its original relational structure and historical data.

Working state: a new public interface is being rebuilt around the restored system. Core Who · What · Where · When · How · Why searching already functions, with further SUMS features being progressively reactivated.

SUMS at a Glance

  • 113,247 database records and relationships
  • 14,948 books and perspective titles, linked to 8,747 people
  • Approximately 600,000 words of readable textual content. Of this, about 155,000 words comprise surviving explanatory and narrative prose.
  • 7,234 page and partial-content records
  • 1,139 artwork records and 702 image records/references
  • 793 keywords and subject terms, including 744 with notes or mini-articles
  • 1,818 classification terms and extensive linked classification structures
  • 707 cities, 58 countries, 8 continents and 499 institutions
  • 37 master/source bibliographies and 29 languages
  • The 155,000 words of explanatory prose comprise about 59,100 words of page transcriptions, 40,450 of biographical notes, 39,800 of subject explanations and 14,600 of page notes.

The surviving restored database dates from August 2003 and is being preserved as a historical baseline. PRC is also working to restore two other SUMS knowledge packages built by Kim: one on Leonardo da Vinci and the other on New Media.

Perspective Studied as a Whole

Perspective Category Theory (PCT) provides an integrated framework for analysing how spatial reality is viewed, imaged, experienced, transformed and represented. It brings dispersed knowledge together within a systematic terminology and classification, treating perspective as a coherent field with its own principles and structures while extending established knowledge.

Applications of perspective organised by discipline and
by five principal goals: View, Match, Represent, Illusion and Immersion.

Perspective Images & Views

Browse visual examples and image collections across the major forms of perspective, from linear and parallel perspective to optical, natural, curvilinear, stereoscopic, immersive and other forms.

Go to the Perspective Images & Views Catalogue →

Finding Perspective Confusing?

Perspective is deceptively familiar: much of its underlying geometry, optics and perceptual structure is hidden from ordinary awareness, making it surprisingly complex and easy to misunderstand. Errors, misconceptions and false assumptions remain widespread in textbooks, teaching and established accounts.

Teaching Perspective 

The PRC examines not only how perspective is taught, but which underlying geometrical principles are actually explained. Recent research comparing 87 teaching sources reveals significant differences between the teaching of familiar procedures and the underlying geometrical principles on which they depend.

Explore Perspective Teaching Research →
View the 87-Source Teaching Audit →

Explore Perspective

Choose a route into the theory, applications, images and research resources of perspective.

Start Here →   ·   Learn Perspective →   ·   Explore Theory →
Applications →   ·   Images & Views →   ·   Errors & Misconceptions →
Search the Dictionary →   ·   Search SUMS →   ·   Search the Bibliography →