Warping Road Optical Illusion

First of all let me apologize for lack of update yesterday and on the day before. I just hope today’s photo will make up for the gap.

Look how the road on your right appears warped! It kind of reminds me of those surreal-melted bridges and roads that can be found all over Google Earth. Yet the “imperfections” weren’t caused by some automatic 3D computing and modeling that Google applies to it’s aerial imagery. No, this is just an ordinary aerial shot, and the warping is just an illusion caused by the super-wide tollgate that widens the road with enough tollbooths to accept and process all the heavy traffic.

It just seems so surreal to me. Even after understanding the illusion, I still have trouble seeing the road as an ordinary highway widened at it’s belly. I can’t stop thinking all those vehicles would tip over and fall, once they surpass the tollbooth’s “cliff edge”… How about you? Did you find it impressive?

Oh, I almost forgot: Facebook made an update to our channel to comply with its new Timeline standard. Go ahead, check it out – there are many nice illusions posted to it daily!

66 Replies to “Warping Road Optical Illusion”

  1. Sorry, I don’t manage to see what you mean. I just see a road getting much wider and then getting smaller again…

    1. then u read it to understand without reading if u just watch it only the picture will be found…

  2. All I saw is a highway. I had to read all of the description to realize how you came up with a cliff… But I see it now. Neat.

  3. Seemed normal to me, but I could adjust my eyes to make it look warped. Pretty cool.. I like how it looks like a drop off.

  4. It’s obviously not a Canadian border crossing. They hardly have enough booths to let anyone through and traffic can get backed up for miles.

  5. me,my sis,and my mom watched happy feet two and we spotted MANY illusions,i just don’t now how to submint

  6. Holy cow…. It took me a few minutes to see it. But once you see it, its hard to see it the correct way… For those that are having a hard time seeing the illusion, it looks like the row of toll booths are along the top of a ridge. At the point that the road widens on both sides is where the cars start going up the hill to towards the ridge…

  7. This has to be S. Korea. We used to go through those toll gates all the time. It’s real fun when there’s a lot of traffic lol. I do kind of see the illusion, but having been through it in real life kind of spoils the illusion.

  8. It’s all in your perspective. I didn’t first see the illusion because I see lots of aerial shots. If I image the portion above the toll booth as flat and then rising away, then it does look like the cars in the area below the toll booth should be falling off the “edge of the earth”. The flat earthers should enjoy this one.

  9. First!
    Also, it reminds me of the scene from Inception where the city is getting folded over, except this road just got lifted instead.

  10. Laaaaaame
    i dont know why you cant see a highway – i dont see no illusion… just diverging lanes… never seen a toll both before?

  11. I don’t know if my monitor has different settings than yours but this just looks like an ordinary road to me!

  12. Actually, I think it would work much better if the picture was cropped to just below the toll booth. The road approaching the toll booth spoils the illusion for me. The upper road looks so much like it is going downwards than up again that.

  13. It’s not warping, the lanes are more than doubeling, it actually needs more space.

    It’s not even an illusion, it’s really made like that.

  14. I think this image has been photoshoped to create the illusion.Look carefully at the vehicles – they are all pictured directly from the front,including those travelling from the farthest sides of the toll.Under these circumstances surely you would expect to see some of the sides of them and we do not.

  15. The illusion is made more realistic by the fact that the photo is not a “top-down” aerial photo but was taken at an angle, and by the fact that the road in the upper part of the photo is probably downhill from the road in the lower part. The upper widening part appears to be on a steep incline.

  16. I can’t seem to see the strangeness in this. It just looks like the road widens to me!

    Oh, wait, nevermind, I see it!

  17. Wow!
    This is cRaZy!
    At first glance it looked normal for the most part, and then it suddenly looked super steep!
    Now I cant see it as looking normal anymore…lol

  18. It looks cool, but as the cars don’t become bigger when it’s “Warped” i couldn’t really feel the effect. Nice post anyway!

  19. With regard th toll booth picture, what I see is like a roller coaster with th booths sat @ th very peek and a steep downhill section going back to earth, either side.

  20. I see it now, the road is like a wall, and they are going up on the wall, without the cars pointing up, but it looks like the car is fully on it, (hard to explain), it looked like a normal road widening up at first though, it is an illusion, trust me.

  21. I’m really surprised at how many people can’t see it, or didn’t see it at first. As soon as I saw the picture it looked like it was jumping off the screen! Very neat.

  22. its a toll in seoul..there’s a writing on it right in the middle..anyway nice perspective..I used to dreamt about this kind of thing..going up so high almost vertically on a highway..surreal indeed

  23. it makes an optical illusion making it looks like as if the cars are climbing then goes down after the toll gate.. pretty neat :)

  24. i like ur imagination for giving the explenation >>but i want u to give the exact site or name of this road and bridg

    my regards

  25. I really thought that the road was raised at the top and bending near the toll gates…….untill I reaD THE DETAILS. fANTASTIC.

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