As a kid I learned to see stereograms in 3D by crossing my eyes. Exact same technique. Comes in handy for Mars images today.
I've acquired a new superpower
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Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#352I've never been able to 'lock' the two images together like this with my eyes focus. That was incredible.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#353As I understand it, Magic Eye stereoscopic images were originally developed by brain scientists studying how we see in 3D (i.e., how the brain processes 2 eye inputs into a 3D image).
There were two competing theories:
1. The brain first does a recognition pass (that's a house, that's a person, etc.) and compares the two eyes to see which objects have moved.
2. The brain compares the two eye inputs first, at the "pixel" level and figures out which pattern of pixels has moved, then afterwards, applies recognition to the resulting 3D image.
Magic Eye would only work if #2 is the correct theory (because in Magic Eye, there is nothing to recognize until AFTER you convert to 3D).
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may or may not be aware that Andy Warhol famously quipped that, "in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes," back in the late 1960s. As media has gotten to be ever more ubiquitous and the cost of entry lower, he was clearly onto something decades before the internet!
To update this excellent quote to 2025, change minutes to seconds and you just described TikTok.
Yeah, I was thinking that the while modern social media has made the "cost of entry lower," and everyone can theoretically reach more people than ever, it's hard to even describe most of it as "fame" anymore. I mean, does content even "go viral" anymore, with users subdivided into the tiniest niche communities or audiences? Even if things get wider traction for a while, there's so much competition with so much other content that everything seems to get quickly drowned out and then can't even be found again later through search.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#355This 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…
I've also always had a hard time with these. I suspect it's because one of my eyes was slightly lazy when I was a child, so my brain learned to put more importance on the signal from the other eye. When I cross my eyes, the image from the better eye tends to just totally override the other one, so it can be really hard to see these kinds of effects.
I have exactly this as well. My optician explained it as my brain would use the information from the lazier eye only if there wasn't any information from the good eye. Just tried the eyes crossed trick on the easy image in the article and the 3rd image in the middle is the right one. If I let them drift apart so there are 4 images I can see the left one and the difference (because I'd already found it), but as soon as I force them to overlap the left signal disappears and I'm only seeing the right image. I've also never managed to do a magic eye or anything, and 3d movies just give me a headache.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#356Earlier 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.
Yep, well at least 98% sure anyway. But you're right, that 'second level' image does look a lot like a tulip, much better description than what I said about W's :) And of course this led me to try zooming out a bit and going for level 3+... kinda feels like I'm looking down at the top of a strangely shaped wedding cake, which would also go nicely with the flowers and heart theme. Thanks for giving me an excuse to take another look!
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#357At 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.
I can't overlap the images to save my life - they get like halfway there and that's it...
What really helped me was doing some sessions with an Orthoptist to reeducate my eyes. I used to see double when stressed sometimes and could never imagine to converge/cross my eyes and retain focus.
With the reeducation I was able to see the Impossible one in focus after a couple tries.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#358I didn't spend the time reading the comments to see if this has been said already, but crossing your eyes works but learning to diverge your eyes is better in some situations. It's easier to learn to cross because you can just look at your nose, and you can bring together two images that are further away by crossing than by diverging. But diverging is the way we are normally (when looking across the room say instead…
Interesting, what kind of situations does it come in handy?
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#359At 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.
I can't overlap the images to save my life - they get like halfway there and that's it...
Same as in autostereogram, the trick is to look to the distance.
Close your eyes and imagine a mountain far away or some distant object, notice how your eyes adjust to see it. Open your eyes and try to look at this imaginary mountain while the image is in front of you.
When you see the third Image, treat it as if its a distant 3d object somewhere on the horizon.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#360[deleted]