What exactly is "shimmering"?

[BroadbandGamer]

I get a lot of textures flickering in and out when I play BF2. Most of the time its textures that are far away. Is this what everyone keeps referring to?

 

[VIAN]

shimmering is...

imagine playing a game and someone accidentally spilt some glitter on the floor. and on the walls and pretty much everywhere you look. But it only shows at a certain angle. Like say 5 feet from you everything that went into that area you look at would shimmer.

 

[Bona Fide]

Actually, I heard it was like a cross between a glitter effect and the reflective effect you get from water