I that not the entire point with those "find the difference" pictures?
To teach kids how to do just this ?
I've acquired a new superpower
251–260 of 583 posts
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#252At a local bar they had a game machine, and if you got a high score on any of the games, your tab for the evening was free. One of the games was a "spot the differences" between two pictures with an ever decreasing timer for each round. Using this trick I was able to easily surpass the high score, and garner a crowd watching me perform this mind numbing feat. Probably my peak fame right there.
Failed to perform the technique despite multiple retries, but didn't have any issues spotting differences the normal way for all except the impossible mode - which just felt like it would be tedious. My usual method is just to brute-force linear scan from left to right, top-to-bottom. May not be elegant, but it works.
...except as you say, it didn't work. The "eye-cross" trick gave the answer on the impossible one in ~10 seconds.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#253For anyone who wants to learn this, try this way using your finger as a helper. Put the images in front of your eyes. Bring your finger between your face and the image at almost middle of the distance. Now look at your finger. Move your finger back and forth and notice the background (where your picture is) While doing this, notice that at a particular distance, the images in background will perfectly overlap each ot…
My eyes seem to immediately refocus as soon as my finger moves away no matter how many times I try this. Before I move my finger away, everything in my peripheral vision is too blurry to be useful.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#254I was able to do it for the first time after reading this webpage with the technique, cool!
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Failed to perform the technique despite multiple retries, but didn't have any issues spotting differences the normal way for all except the impossible mode - which just felt like it would be tedious. My usual method is just to brute-force linear scan from left to right, top-to-bottom. May not be elegant, but it works.
...except as you say, it didn't work. The "eye-cross" trick gave the answer on the impossible one in ~10 seconds.
The impossible one was sub-2-seconds for me. I had to do it over to make sure it wasn't more than one difference...
Makes you wonder if the kid he was talking about had a lazy eye or crossed eyes or something.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#256Nice to see someone discover this! I've always been partial to spot the differences and crossview images - I am able to cross each eye independently of one another, which makes overlapping these sorts of images very easy. For example, I could cross my right eye, while my left stays perfectly still. This causes instant double vision, and relaxing how crossed the eye is lets me line the images up very quickly. It's fun to do in places with a repetitive wall texture, too - seeing something in real life while adding a faux 3D effect on top of it is kind of trippy. Probably my most useless skill, but a fun one regardless.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#257Incredible! This technique is also used for the 3d visualization of protein structures, it was called "cross viewing": https://imgur.com/cross-views-are-commonly-used-to-view-prot... You cross your eyes to get the two images to line up, hold it there and then try to adjust the focus of your eyes. It's a neat skill to have.
I found the toolbars and stuff around the edge of the image made it difficult for me to lock onto the crossview image in your example; surrounding it with more blank background makes it easier for me: https://imgur.com/a/NizzRgo
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#258When auto stereograms were all the rage in the late 80's I had a program on my Mac Plus that let me make/edit them and I used to edit for hours WHILE looking at them in 3D. Then one time I was walking down a hallway with a repetitive wallpaper pattern, my eyes did the thing, the entire hallway appeared to shift in front of me, and I stumbled and fell. Still to this day my eyes will sometimes automatically snap into '…
No need for the Mac Plus program, you can make these in any text editor. Use a fixed-width font and fill a line with a repeating word eg
WORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORD
Then copy that and paste it a bunch of times to make it multi-line.
Cross your eyes so that the WORD's overlap (all except the leftmost and rightmost). You now see two cursors instead of one. Position your two cursors anywhere you want and then insert a space in order to make the corresponding WORD (or ORDW or RDWO or ORDW) sink into the screen. (Or rise if you parallel-view.)
We used to do this in the computer labs back in 6th grade.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't overlap the images to save my life - they get like halfway there and that's it...
There is a way to help yourself. Put the pair of images in front of your eyes. Bring your finger between your face and the image. Now look at your finger. Move your finger back and forth. While doing this, notice that at a particular distance, the images in background will perfectly overlap each other. That's your moment. Pull out your finger and look at that image. --- Should take lot less tries to learn doing it wi…
I tried, this, and I can get it to overlap in the background, but as soon as I take my finger away, I lose it.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#260I discovered this trick independently about a decade ago, to use cross-eyed viewing to easily spot differences between two similar images. Like you said, the parts that mismatch appear to shimmer and be unstable, making them obvious. However, I feel eye strain from doing it, so I prefer other methods. 99% of the time, I do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_comparator instead, just switching between two images with…
To reduce eye strain, don’t cross your eyes, but relax them (so, the other way). Instantly clear and snaps together as if magnetic.
A simple trick to doing this, in case it's not clear how to do it, is to try focusing on an imaginary point behind the screen as you look at the images. You will see a third image between the two start to come into focus. Now relax your eyes and look at that image. Simple, and quite a bit more relaxing than crossing your eyes.
The only disadvantage to this method is that it seems there is a limit to how wide the middle image can be, i.e., the original images may not completely overlap.
If you do want to cross your eyes but do not know how to do it, do the opposite of the above: try to focus on an imaginary point closer to you than the screen as you look at the images. This method is far more taxing on the eyes though.