Right? I figured it was an odd setup with an obvious solution: one of them used their other arm to insert the bottle between all their hands. Then the pattern snapped out like a jump scare.
There is city camo too. It utilizes straight edges instead of round edges, since cities have lots of straight edges and nature has few. Camo just breaks up your outline which stops the mind from perceiving you immediately.
To an extent. The real purpose of camo / patterns is to break the silhouette of the human. The eye is really good at picking out "people shaped" objects. Confuse that even a little, and you're fucking golden in comparison. It's not just blending in, but not immediately being identified. That split second of additional brain power it takes could mean all the difference.
The main reason it works is that it obscures silhouettes. Studies have found that the actual pattern isn’t as important as the fact that you aren’t an obviously person-shaped silhouette. Basically, the brain works on assumptions, and if it doesn’t recognize a person-shaped silhouette, it won’t look for a person there.
Notice that the sleeve doesn’t really match the surroundings. But since it’s not a distinct pattern with recognizable repetition, the edges of the arm are effectively blurred into the background. So instead of seeing an arm, you just see more background.
This is largely why city camo still has texture. Logic would tell you that if you’re trying to blend into flat concrete, that the best way to do that is with a flat grey color. But in reality, that would still leave you looking like a person, and people would immediately notice you. Instead, you use a texture to break up your silhouette, so peoples’ eyes never even get drawn to you in the first place. Blending into the flat grey background isn’t as important when you can simply have people look right past you from the start.
Aw shit. For years I've been seeing this picture and didn't understand it. I finally got it.
because today was the first time I zoomed in and focused on the bottles. Today I noticed there are four bottles. But only three arms. So I zoomed in on the 4th floating bottle and noticed the glove-clad hand. I followed the hand and saw it was attached to an arm clad in camouflage.