Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I've acquired a new superpower

danielwirtz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 583 posts

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#321

Post by fonema »

grishka wrote: post #305

This whole "just cross your eyes" thing has never worked for me, not once. I've seen these strange patterns printed on the backs of notebooks that supposedly make some sort of 3D effect when you "just cross your eyes". Later, when I saw similar images online, I was able to at least visualize these hidden shapes by opening the image in photoshop, duplicating the layer, setting the copy to "difference" and moving it le…

Same here, but I always imagined that for it to work, I would need to have roughly equal vision in both eyes, which I don't. Everything is blurry with my left eye, and no glasses or lenses have ever helped. I attribute this as the reason.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#322

Post by mmh0000 »

There's a video game of this called QuickSpot. Back in 2008, this was one of my favorite games for the Nintendo DS. It trains the ability to spot little differences quickly. Sadly, outside of winning a barely known video game, it's not a super useful skill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickSpot

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#323

Post by BenjiWiebe »

KPGv2 wrote: post #165
rwmj wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent far too much time as a twenty-something generating autostereograms, which seems to have trained my eyes. I was able to "cross" the images on this page very quickly.

NB autostereograms require you to move your eyes away from each other, the opposite of crossing them. To put it another way, crossing your eyes is what your eyes do when you're looking at something close to you, while the opposite is when you're looking far away. Which is why for ASGs people advise you to look past the picture. Or why you bring the pic close to your eyes (so close that you basically have no choice bu…

Ever since I was a child addicted to the "magic eye" stereogram books, I've always diverged (not crossed) my eyes for spot-the-difference puzzles.

Also, if you're doing it on a piece of paper, hold a pen in each hand spaced right so you see the middle (3rd) hand in the middle combined image, and move both hands in sync to circle all the differences. Kind of a cool way to point them out to someone else.

The difficult puzzle took me about 10 seconds here since I was looking for more than one difference. I saw the first difference in about 1 second.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#324

Post by BenjiWiebe »

biomcgary wrote: post #103
physicles wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you crossing your eyes (focusing nearer than the object) or diverging them (focusing past it)? Diverging is a harder skill to learn.

Is diverging harder? I find it easier. Maybe it is from long ago practice on stereograms, but I'm curious if it could be due to neurological/physiological differences.

Diverging is way way easier for me, but I am positive that's because of the 10's of hours (at least) that I spent staring at magic eye images as a child.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#325

Post by BenjiWiebe »

makeworld wrote: post #320
iforgotpassword wrote: post #187

We got a magic eye book when I was maybe 6 - some time early elementary school. After learning how to do it, and also trying it by crossing my eyes to see an "inverted" image, I started doing it whenever I saw some repeating pattern IRL. It was most interesting when it was slightly uneven, for example a fence with sloppily applied vertical planks. Doing the magic eye would make it seem like some of them are closer to…

Wow I feel like I've never seen anyone talk about this. Doing it with fences can feel pretty magical, like the object is more "real" than other things.

Or the side of a shopping cart.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#327

Post by dotancohen »

SamBam wrote: post #317
kayge wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny because even if you do the Magic Eye pictures "correctly" (focusing past them) you can still get funky images by going too far and locking the surrounding pattern a second time. If I remember right the first time I did this was on a heart picture (similar to [0]), which ends up looking like a big puffy W stacked on top of a slightly larger puffy W :D [0] https://i0.wp.com/www.magiceye.com/wp-content/upload…

Are you sure that's supposed to be a heart? I see the three peaks of a "W" as well -- I think it's supposed to be a tulip, no? That also matches the background theme.

The background is flowers, but the hidden image is most certainly the classic heart shape.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#328

Post by BenjiWiebe »

xamuel wrote: post #244
iforgotpassword wrote: post #187

We got a magic eye book when I was maybe 6 - some time early elementary school. After learning how to do it, and also trying it by crossing my eyes to see an "inverted" image, I started doing it whenever I saw some repeating pattern IRL. It was most interesting when it was slightly uneven, for example a fence with sloppily applied vertical planks. Doing the magic eye would make it seem like some of them are closer to…

I wrote a paper about doing this using human eyes as the "repeating pattern" (either someone else's, or your own in a mirror): https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEDSK.pdf ...You can use this trick to make boring meetings or conversations mildly more amusing (but be careful not to look like a clown crossing your eyes). If you're an expert at this, you can even do it to your own hands. Hold both hands in front of you but…

If you're distant enough / the people are sitting close enough, you can stereogram two people's faces together. You usually only get fleeting moments of crispness when their heads are aligned correctly though.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#330

Post by BenjiWiebe »

SamBam wrote: post #317
kayge wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny because even if you do the Magic Eye pictures "correctly" (focusing past them) you can still get funky images by going too far and locking the surrounding pattern a second time. If I remember right the first time I did this was on a heart picture (similar to [0]), which ends up looking like a big puffy W stacked on top of a slightly larger puffy W :D [0] https://i0.wp.com/www.magiceye.com/wp-content/upload…

Are you sure that's supposed to be a heart? I see the three peaks of a "W" as well -- I think it's supposed to be a tulip, no? That also matches the background theme.

If you see 3 peaks you went too far - which is really easy to do on mobile. I had to be careful to go only "once deep".
Post reply on HN