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Paracelsus19 t1_j4ysh6l wrote

Basically so that we can observe different phenomena and focus on the necessary details in different ways. When your eyes "saccade" - move rapidly from one point of focus to another, our brains are cutting out the information between the two points and just working to rapidly jump from one point of interest to another. With smooth pursuit, our brain and eyes are maintaining a tracking focus on slowly moving target so that we don't miss any detail - if the target speeds up though our eyes will switch to saccade movements to keep up with where the target is going along it's expected trajectory. The video below gives a brief introductory overview of eye movement and will familiarise you with some handy terms to research further.

https://youtu.be/FaC2RXBss2c

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Snowy_Eagle t1_j4yvetb wrote

A lot of what you “see” is your brain filling in the gaps. So motion that ‘looks smooth’ isn’t necessarily because your eyes are tracking it smoothly, but because your brain knows what objects moving through space act like…

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[deleted] t1_j51ahsb wrote

My two cents, evolutionary it makes more sense and is more efficient. If you are in the savanna, you need to quickly see static points and observe their detail to see if there is any threat. If the thing moves you need to keep focus on the moving thing as it might kill you.

smoothly tracking static things is too much unnecessary info, at least, at least that is what nature decided for us

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Krail t1_j52umld wrote

In addition to the points everyone else has brought up, it's important to note that you're sort of always tracking moving objects with your eyes.

If you're not resting on something, your head is basically never completely still. Try moving your head from side to side while staring at one word in this sentence - your eyes will reflexively rotate on their own to stay locked on.

This isn't completely the same. Your vestibular system senses your head's rotation, and your eyes reflexively move in response to that, so they have a little more information to work with here. But essentially, it's just kind of the nature of our eyes to lock onto persistent visual objects, whether your or the object are the ones that are moving.

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