The ambient optic array is the structured arrangement of light with respect to a point of observation.
[2] Gibson stressed that the environment is not composed of geometrical solids on a plane, as in a painting, but is instead best understood as objects nested within one another and organized hierarchically by size.
The ambient optic array, therefore, is also organized hierarchically by size, though the components are the solid angles from the object to the point of observation.
[3] Put simply by philosopher Alva Noë, the ambient optic array is "how things look from here in these conditions.
The above example of objects "growing" or "shrinking" as an observer moves towards or away from them is an example of an optical flow invariant, as the array will always transform like this under those conditions.
Gibson hypothesized that agents evolved to directly access relevant information about themselves and the environment from the invariant structures in the array, without the need for high level cognitive computations.
In response, Gibson argued that illusions like the Necker cube are the result of artifice and would not be encountered by agents in realistic perceptual situations, and therefore are irrelevant.
[7] Furthermore, David Marr claimed that Gibson had profoundly underestimated the intricacy of visual information processing.