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What do you call a "hidden" shape denoted by a dashed line?

English Language & Usage Asked on June 13, 2021

Is there a word (or short phrase, preferably two words) that describes a shape which is not visible, but whose presence is indicated (e.g. in an illustration, by a dashed line)? Particularly, an object that is behind the viewer?

So far, the closest words I’ve come up with are: silhouette, phantom, occlusion, overlay.


Here is an example of what I’m talking about:

example

Here, the objects (conceptually, skylights in a map of a warehouse) are represented by a dashed line, but an umbrella in a video game that turns transparent when the player walks under it would be another example. (Note that the helpful red arrows are only pointing to two of the four such objects. This is because I am lazy, not because the ones on the left are somehow different.)

One Answer

If I understand you correctly: When one object occludes another, you want to the occluding object to become transparent to reveal the occluded object. Like this:

under an umbrella

I’m going to go with see-through view, taking cues from this loosely-related whitepaper: Visualization Methods for Outdoor See-Through Vision

I’ll let you muck around in there for more ideas, but here’s the opening sentence:

Visualizing occluded objects is a useful applications of Mixed Reality (MR), which we call “see-through vision.” For this application, it is important to display occluded objects in such a manner that they can be recognized intuitively by the user.

X-ray view might work too. If you need to refer to the actual dotted line, perhaps: wireframe.

Answered by Tinfoil Hat on June 13, 2021

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