Niffy: Perceptual Diffing to Catch Invisible Bugs
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Re: Niffy: Perceptual Diffing to Catch Invisible Bugs
#2Here's a poor-man's perceptual diff: Cross your eyes.
I'm serious. Try opening this image: https://assets.contents.io/asset_rIfFTtwp.png
You see two images side by side. Now slowly cross your eyes, so that the two images merge into three images. Once they align, the new middle image will have information from both your left and right eyes, and your brain's perceptual system will automatically try to reconcile any differences.
You'll see the differences as shimmering portions of the image, that tend to be shifted forward or backward in 3D space. In this example, the text at the bottom is shifted rightward in the right image, which your brain interprets as "closer to the eye". Differences jump out!
You can use this trick any time you want to diff two screens, pieces of text, whatever! You don't need a diff program -- your brain's perceptual system already has one built-in.
Re: Niffy: Perceptual Diffing to Catch Invisible Bugs
#3Here's a poor-man's perceptual diff: Cross your eyes. I'm serious. Try opening this image: https://assets.contents.io/asset_rIfFTtwp.png You see two images side by side. Now slowly cross your eyes, so that the two images merge into three images. Once they align, the new middle image will have information from both your left and right eyes, and your brain's perceptual system will automatically try to reconcile any dif…
This didn't work on my phone. Perhaps the screen is too small.
Re: Niffy: Perceptual Diffing to Catch Invisible Bugs
#4Here's a poor-man's perceptual diff: Cross your eyes. I'm serious. Try opening this image: https://assets.contents.io/asset_rIfFTtwp.png You see two images side by side. Now slowly cross your eyes, so that the two images merge into three images. Once they align, the new middle image will have information from both your left and right eyes, and your brain's perceptual system will automatically try to reconcile any dif…
This didn't work on my phone. Perhaps the screen is too small.
Didn't work for me on my 34" screen. Perhaps the screen is too big.
Re: Niffy: Perceptual Diffing to Catch Invisible Bugs
#5Here's a poor-man's perceptual diff: Cross your eyes. I'm serious. Try opening this image: https://assets.contents.io/asset_rIfFTtwp.png You see two images side by side. Now slowly cross your eyes, so that the two images merge into three images. Once they align, the new middle image will have information from both your left and right eyes, and your brain's perceptual system will automatically try to reconcile any dif…
I can attest to this, it's how I've been solving "spot the difference" puzzles for ages. It works great!
Re: Niffy: Perceptual Diffing to Catch Invisible Bugs
#6Here's a poor-man's perceptual diff: Cross your eyes. I'm serious. Try opening this image: https://assets.contents.io/asset_rIfFTtwp.png You see two images side by side. Now slowly cross your eyes, so that the two images merge into three images. Once they align, the new middle image will have information from both your left and right eyes, and your brain's perceptual system will automatically try to reconcile any dif…
This didn't work on my phone. Perhaps the screen is too small.
Worked fine for me on the phone...
Re: Niffy: Perceptual Diffing to Catch Invisible Bugs
#7Here's a poor-man's perceptual diff: Cross your eyes. I'm serious. Try opening this image: https://assets.contents.io/asset_rIfFTtwp.png You see two images side by side. Now slowly cross your eyes, so that the two images merge into three images. Once they align, the new middle image will have information from both your left and right eyes, and your brain's perceptual system will automatically try to reconcile any dif…
I can't do that for such large images. I can do it for ones maybe a third of that width.... Do you have any tips for me?
Re: Niffy: Perceptual Diffing to Catch Invisible Bugs
#8Here's a poor-man's perceptual diff: Cross your eyes. I'm serious. Try opening this image: https://assets.contents.io/asset_rIfFTtwp.png You see two images side by side. Now slowly cross your eyes, so that the two images merge into three images. Once they align, the new middle image will have information from both your left and right eyes, and your brain's perceptual system will automatically try to reconcile any dif…
I can attest to this, it's how I've been solving "spot the difference" puzzles for ages. It works great!
So have I - fun trick to play at a bar or wherever they have the (now defunct?) MegaTouch games. Although, when you ran into a dim or out of focus screen (the old ones used a CRT) it didn't always work that well. And you'd also find the bugs in the game where certain images didn't have the differences correctly marked!
Re: Niffy: Perceptual Diffing to Catch Invisible Bugs
#9Here's a poor-man's perceptual diff: Cross your eyes. I'm serious. Try opening this image: https://assets.contents.io/asset_rIfFTtwp.png You see two images side by side. Now slowly cross your eyes, so that the two images merge into three images. Once they align, the new middle image will have information from both your left and right eyes, and your brain's perceptual system will automatically try to reconcile any dif…
I can't do that for such large images. I can do it for ones maybe a third of that width.... Do you have any tips for me?
Zoom out?
Re: Niffy: Perceptual Diffing to Catch Invisible Bugs
#10Here's a poor-man's perceptual diff: Cross your eyes. I'm serious. Try opening this image: https://assets.contents.io/asset_rIfFTtwp.png You see two images side by side. Now slowly cross your eyes, so that the two images merge into three images. Once they align, the new middle image will have information from both your left and right eyes, and your brain's perceptual system will automatically try to reconcile any dif…
I can attest to this, it's how I've been solving "spot the difference" puzzles for ages. It works great!
I can't believe I've never used this trick on those stupid games! I've known about it for ages (good trick for visually diffing a bunch of hex on screen) but it never occurred to me to use it for those silly, silly games.