2.5D

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Part of a series on
Video game graphics
Types 2.5D & 3/4 perspective First-person view Fixed 3D Full motion video based game Graphic adventure game Isometric video game graphics Side-scrolling video game Stereoscopic video game Text-based game Third-person view Tile-based video game Top-down perspective Vector game
Topics 2D computer graphics Parallax scrolling Pixel art Sprite 3D computer graphics 3D rendering Polygon Pre-rendering Cel shading Skybox Animation Digitization Rotoscoping Computer graphics Real-time graphics Game art design Graphics engine First-person shooter engine Tile engine Virtual camera system Voxel
Lists List of four-dimensional games List of FMV-based games List of FPS engines List of stereoscopic video games List of text-based computer games Category:Video game graphics
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2.5D (basic pronunciation two-and-a-half dimensional) perspective refers to gameplay or movement in a video game or virtual reality environment that is restricted to a two-dimensional (2D) plane with little to no access to a third dimension in a space that otherwise appears to be three-dimensional and is often simulated and rendered in a 3D digital environment.

This is similar but different from pseudo-3D perspective (sometimes called three-quarter view when the environment is portrayed from an angled top-down perspective), which refers to 2D graphical projections and similar techniques used to cause images or scenes to simulate the appearance of being three-dimensional (3D) when in fact they are not.

By contrast, games, spaces or perspectives that are simulated and rendered in 3D and used in 3D level design are said to be true 3D, and 2D rendered games made to appear as 2D without approximating a 3D image are said to be true 2D.

Common in video games, 2.5D projections have also been useful in geographic visualization (GVIS) to help understand visual-cognitive spatial representations or 3D visualization.^[1]

The terms three-quarter perspective and three-quarter view trace their origins to the three-quarter profile in portraiture and facial recognition, which depicts a person's face that is partway between a frontal view and a side view.^[2]