Is there some kind of new technology or something going on here? I have difficulty believing anyone mistaking a flat display for a window no matter how good the picture is or how bad the viewer's depth perception is. This guy in particular was inspecting it and obviously trying to figure it out.

I think it's just a matter of the instinctive fight/flight parts of our brain working a smidge faster than the thinky-thinky logical bits. Which is likely a good thing for our survival overall, if slightly less useful at present than it would've been in the past.

lowell

*water *nature *comedy

Adding video to channels (Comedy, Nature, Water) - requested by ant.

@AeroMechanical:
I watched it a few times, because at first I thought part of the 'trick' was that they vibrated the panels. That would have been cooler, but I think it's simply visual along with a loud noise of the bang of the shark.

I think apart from simply the surprise element one way that makes it work well is that it is a huge screen, and you have to be really close to it to touch it, so it is all you see.

(and of course 1000's of peoples were surprised by it, a hundred of those people were video'd while doing so, and we get to see the best one of those recorded reactions, God bless the Internet)

I believe this is from the James Bond exhibit at the Spy Museum: https://www.spymuseum.org/exhibition-experiences/exquisitely-evil/ . I remember it being pretty effective in person.

I belive part of the trick is the fact that the screen is not that clear to begin with. It looked like a refracted window in a fairly murky water with little visibility, and at first I figured it was a lens trick so the aquatic life couldn't see in. The second part of the trick is "expecting something but in reality expecting to get nothing" when you pound on the glass, and suddenly SHARK.