Geometry – Relationship Between Projection Plane and Projective Plane

3danalytic geometrygeometryprojectionprojective-geometry

We know that during projection 3D space points $(x, y, z)$ projects to projection plane which has 2D points $(x, y).$ But during matrix calculation we use homogenous coordinates is of the form $(x, y, 1).$
And we know that projective plane is of the form $(x, y, 1).$

My question is that homogenous coordinates and projective plane points both are same thing, I mean "is all projective plane points are said homogenous coordinates"?

My second question is what is the difference between projection plane and projective plane? I mean "is projective plane is real plane or just imagination plane"? And we know that projection plane is real thing where we do all projection. But both have similar names. What is the relationship between these?

Best Answer

Short answer: the two concepts “projective plane” and “projection plane” are different things, though they are loosely related.

Longer answer …

The “projective plane”, often denoted by $P^2$, is an abstract mathematical concept. It’s used in a field of mathematics called “projective geometry”. As the other answer explained, the basic idea is to represent each 2D point by a 3D line passing through the origin. The benefit is that this allows you to represent 2D points that are “at infinity”. You can use this technique with any plane.

The “projection plane” is a specific plane that’s used in 3D computer graphics. The points of a 3D object are projected onto the projection plane to produce a 2D image. Quite often, the projection plane has equation $z=1$ in some coordinate system.

People often use 4D (homogeneous) coordinates and $4\times 4$ matrices to represent the 3D-to-2D projection in computer graphics. This approach is not much related to the projective plane $P^2$, but it is somewhat related to projective 3-space, $P^3$.

Similarly, if you use 3D (homogeneous) coordinates to represent points in any plane, you are effectively working with the projective plane, $P^2$. But note that this is true of any plane. In particular, it’s true of the projection plane that you use in computer graphics, so this is the connection between “projection plane” and “projective plane”.

The main reason homogeneous coordinates are used in computer graphics is so that perspective projection can be represented by a matrix multiplication. But you don’t have to use matrices and homogeneous coordinates if you don’t want to —- the whole projection calculation can be done just using ordinary 3D coordinates. And this approach doesn’t involve $P^2$ or $P^3$ or any other concept from projective geometry.