Whenever I walk up to a chainlink fence, and my vision places it at the wrong z distance, I'm reminded that 3d from vision is a consequence of our biological limitation of not having evolved emitters.
Like echolocation in bats and dolphins... Excellent point!
In fact, humans do have some echolocation capability [0,1]. That should tell us that LIDAR (or emitter-receiver-range-finder capability) may ultimately always be a core piece of the solution.