I've acquired a new superpower • Hacker News Board

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#51

Post by vault » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #6

MarkusWandel wrote: post #2

Wait, that's not crossing your eyes, it's uncrossing them. Ordinarily if you look at something nearby, your eyes aim at a common spot. But when viewing a stereogram, you need to convince your eyes to aim at a spot more distant than the subject. This is easy with practice, however IMHO it helps to be significantly nearsighted. Then you simply take off your glasses, and can look at something nearby with infinity focus,…

See my other comment about cross view vs parallel view, looks like you can do one vs the other and the author can do the opposite.

Wow. Thanks to MarkusWandel I discovered I can focus images while crossing my eyes and finally understood your comment. I've always done the "uncrossing" since I was a kid.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#52

Post by yegle » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

I feel old knowing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Eye

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#53

Post by egypturnash » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

You can also now free-view stereo image pairs. Congratulations.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#54

Post by alt227 » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 4:20 PM UTC

TonyTrapp wrote: post #30

Doesn't work for me. Just like stereograms. I just don't know how to "tell" my eyes to cross. Maybe similar to how I didn't figure out until I was 20-something how finger snipping works. Maybe by the time I'm 50 I can cross my eyes...!

You dont 'tell' your eyes to cross, you just look closer or further away. Try looking at the image at normal distance, whilst imaginging that you are looking into the distance at a beautiful view or at the horizon on an ocean. It is this difference in distance focusing which causes the illusion.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#55

Post by satvikpendem » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 4:20 PM UTC

a1o wrote: post #5

A new way of doing git diff, leave both versions of the code side by side and cross your eyes.

Somewhat related, but I've been using the Semantic Diff extension in VSCode, works better than standard git diff.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#56

Post by s3krit » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 4:26 PM UTC

alt227 wrote: post #54

TonyTrapp wrote: post #30

Doesn't work for me. Just like stereograms. I just don't know how to "tell" my eyes to cross. Maybe similar to how I didn't figure out until I was 20-something how finger snipping works. Maybe by the time I'm 50 I can cross my eyes...!

You dont 'tell' your eyes to cross, you just look closer or further away. Try looking at the image at normal distance, whilst imaginging that you are looking into the distance at a beautiful view or at the horizon on an ocean. It is this difference in distance focusing which causes the illusion.

Actually, given enough practice, you can literally just get your eyes to do it. I started doing magic eye puzzles as a kid and loved it, so just eventually learned how to control my eyes in that way. Even today, if I see any repeating pattern, or even anything vaguely similarly shaped, I can’t help but do it

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#57

Post by Karawebnetwork » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 4:27 PM UTC

alt227 wrote: post #54

TonyTrapp wrote: post #30

Doesn't work for me. Just like stereograms. I just don't know how to "tell" my eyes to cross. Maybe similar to how I didn't figure out until I was 20-something how finger snipping works. Maybe by the time I'm 50 I can cross my eyes...!

You dont 'tell' your eyes to cross, you just look closer or further away. Try looking at the image at normal distance, whilst imaginging that you are looking into the distance at a beautiful view or at the horizon on an ocean. It is this difference in distance focusing which causes the illusion.

Whenever I try to do this, the most I get is that the two images touch. The cats in the example are holding paws, but they never overlap. I've been trying to make this work since the old magic images from the 90s, but I've never managed it. I wonder if there isn a hardware limitation related to my eye configuration.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#58

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 4:28 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #43

At 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.

[deleted]

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#59

Post by idiotsecant » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 4:30 PM UTC

codazoda wrote: post #48

Weird timing. I dunno why this works but I've been using it to see mice. You see, I noticed that I have a mouse problem in my garage. I figure if I've seen one mouse, there are probably more. So, I stood on some stairs in my garage and crossed my eyes to sort of blur the scene. It allowed me to catch movement more quickly and I was quickly watching multiple mice run around the edges of the area.

That seems like not the same thing though, right? You're not doing a diff on two images, you're just losing resolution so you can direct more attention to movement.

Re: I've acquired a new superpower

#60

Post by idiotsecant » Fri, Jan 10, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

voidUpdate wrote: post #27

I've heard about this before, but I've never actually managed to do it until just now. I needed to sort of "tune the parameters" a lot so that my eyes were crossed but also focused, since I've had a lot of trouble actually getting them in focus when I'm doing it, and the effect isn't as pronounced as I expected it to be

I think you're still not doing it quite right. The effect is really quite obvious and pronounced.