Mission Control Depth

Apple’s “Mission Control” can be activated by swiping three fingers upward to shrink the current windows, allowing easier viewing of what you have open. But what if it wasn’t shrinking, but moving backwards in three-dimensional space? Sort of like this:

Linear perspective, following Euclidean geometry, lets us calculate the distance of an object based on its actual and apparent heights. With a few screenshots we can get the measurements.

A full-sized window on my laptop measures:
1746 pixels high @ 144 ppi (12.125 inches)

FullScreenView-web

In Mission Control view, it measures:
1034 pixels high @ 144 ppi (7.181 inches)

MissionControlView-web

Now, using this formula:

d = h*a

Where:
h = apparent height
a = actual height of object
d = distance

And given our measurements, we can calculate the Mission Control depth:
d = 7.181 * 12.125 = ~87" = ~7'3" (or about 2.2 meters)

Or about like this:

LaptopRendering

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *