Comment by cubefox

> Isn't this how radar works, or feeling your way around a pitch-dark room using only the 2-dimensional surface of your hands (or shins)?

> One might as well ask how it's possible that our complex 3 dimensional world can be contained in the flat surface of a mirror, film strip, or camera sensor.

No this is different. You can't classically encode an arbitrary 3D world on a camera sensor without losing information. It can only create a 2D projection of surfaces. It can't look inside opaque objects. Countless distinct 3D objects could correspond to one an the same 2D projection. There are actually many examples of optical illusions which show that a 2D image can be ambiguous with regards the 3D space it represents.