Depth of Field

Overview

The mesh viewer recently introduced a Depth of Field effect that has been getting quite a bit of attention from SL photographers. This page aims to explain what the effect does, how it might change in the future, and what debug settings control it and what they mean.

Concept

Depth of Field is a photographic effect caused by a lens focusing on a particular subject. There are two planes to consider -- a near focal plane and a far focal plane. When an object is between the far focal plane and near focal plane, it is considered to be in-focus. The human eye is subject to depth of field, but because the field of view of Second Life is more similar to a camera, the in-world depth of field effect is modeled after a 35mm camera with a focal length of 50mm.