Live data from Hacker News

4D toys

4dtoys.com

111–112 of 112 posts

Re: 4D toys

#111
post #31

This is amazing and looks really fun! I remember reading a short science fiction story once, "Mimsy Were the Borogoves"[1], where small children were playing with such 4D toys, which were found to be educative in unpredictable ways. It really makes me want to try it out. I wonder if it's really the same without VR. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimsy_Were_the_Borogoves (watch out, there are spoilers here!)

the bottom of the website includes an illustrated frame and excerpt from that very story

Wow, you're right! Didn't see that, Thanks! :)

Re: 4D toys

#112
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can't. The problem is that we don't actually see 3D, we basically see 2D twice. This gives our senses enough info to reconstruct a 3D mental image, but the information we gain isn't truly 3D. Actual 3D-sight might include us seeing the inside of objects, what's behind them, etc. We're aided in converting our 2x 2D sight into 3D mental models through the use of color and parallax. In projections on images,…

FWIW this is really not true. (The bit about stereo vision being required to see 3D.) When I was in college I was fairly decent on the ping pong table, call it high amateur. I also have very very bad vision - -5 diopters in one eye and -6 in the other. At the time I wore contacts and I was also really really poor. At some point I lost one of my contacts and for six months I was effectively blind in one eye for the pu…

I crushed my glasses with my butt once, and went without for a year or so until I could get new ones.

Once I got the new glasses I was astonished at how flat and "PlayStation-like" everything looked. My depth perception was thrown off and everything looked much closer to me than it actually was.

I think my brain was using blurriness as an indicator of depth, in addition to binocular vision, and with my myopia corrected it lost that information and had to readjust to relying primarily on binocular vision to gauge depth.

Post reply on HN