As a not quite middle aged dude, I only just now figured out how to see magic eye stuff. I tried a couple times in elementary school but didn’t get it so I stopped. Had a few drinks earlier, stumbled on some magic eye pic that I could see clear as day and it blew my mind a little
I couldn’t for most of my life, but then I just tried about two years ago and it clicked. I’ve been able to ever since. It’s a cognitive skill. Once you learn it, it’s like riding a bike. I hate to make it sound as exclusive as it is, because that’s what turned me off of it to begin with, but it really is true. Just figure it out and it’s like a code that you can decode at will.
Yep. There was one on the Sunday comics page every week when I was a kid, and I learned how to do it then. I never understood the people who can’t do it, or thought it was fake.
Not usually, no.
Yes, you have to imagine you are looking into a mirror at yourself and focus your eyes on that place; look past the image.
I didn’t think I could but interestingly enough discovered a technique that works earlier today. Basically get really close whilst staring at a point then gradually move away. It actually is an amazing effect
Off to r/MagicEye now
Wow, I must be the only person on Lemmy that cannot
Someone said that they did some research on people who were able to use 3d TVs and 10% couldn’t, or maybe you just haven’t gotten a hang of it yet?
Someone made a modified version of Quake back in the day, that rendered to stereoscopic 3D in a white noise pattern.
It was such a mindfuck to play!
You get 3D depth but no colors or shades or contrast. It’s just shapes moving. So doors that were flush with the wall were impossible to see, but enemies in dark rooms were fully visible because there is no light or dark.
I like to imagine I got to experience what a bat sees with echolocation.
That sounds cool af! I wonder if something like that still exists.
Inconsistently. Haven’t tried for yonks. Back when they were brand new I got maybe 50%.
How many yonks has in been?
Late 80s early 90s?? Whenever Good Weekend did a weekly.
Now that you’ve figured it out, behold: Stereograms!
The above satellite images from NASA allow you to SEE the topography in 3D.
Off to find my house!
These are awesome thanks for sharing. Also, if you can do magic eye and stereograms, try crossing your eyes when playing those “find the differences between these two pictures” games. They are incredibly easy if you cross your eyes.
Omg I’ve never been able to do a magic eye before, but I think there stereograms just unlocked it for me! I Feel like I get it now, thanks!
I just posted some more over here.
Weird question if anyone happens to know: when I look at these combined, it looks like the elevated parts go INTO the image rather than pop out, like it’s 3D but inverse. I have always been able to see Magic Eyes with no difficulty, but I’ve also had some form of exotropia that I can control to trigger the depth. Should I be doing something different with these stereograms?
Edit: realized this might be expected? Since the instructions on these say to cross your eyes, but the exotropia makes one eye go outward, but I guess I’m confused how I can see any combined depth image at all now lol
You’re doing “wall eyed” viewing. These are for “cross-eyed” viewing. “Wall-eyed” means your eyes are focusing at a point behind the image. You need to cross your eyes for these. Try putting your finger in between your screen and your eyes, varying the distance until the dots merge. Then, remove your finger, focusing on the image itself. That should allow for cross-eyed viewing.
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Fair. I, too, prefer wall-eyed, but these were prepared by NASA. You could edit the image to swap the two and make them Wall-eyed, though!
Yes.
Im in my 30s and learned a few years ago, my brother in law showed me how. Was super cool, I had always thought it was people trolling
I can, but it is sometimes tricky. Usually I can make the image go into 3D mode without too much trouble, but I sometimes can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be seeing. Like, I can tell that things are at different depths but I have a hard time resolving it into a complete cohesive image. I think it is mostly due to the weird random pattern that makes up the image and the difficulty in finding how the edges work together. It could just be shitty stereograms, though, since most of them work fine.
Nope! But I’ve made them. I needed to go find someone with more normal eyes to test my creations for me, though.
How do you make them???
You need a repeating visual pattern, a fairly busy one. Then you need a greyscale image of what you want the “magic” picture to be. You deform the repeating pattern by the intensity of the greyscale image.
When your two eyes overlay the background images, your brain highlights the distortions and interprets them as depth… at least if your eyes are good enough to give your brain that information in the first place.
If you want to know more, the algorithm to do this is public, and you can set it up in eg. javascript in an afternoon.
I can
My tip is to try to look past the picture, like you’re focusing on something 10ft behind the wall. Then squint your eyes.
My parents were of the opinion they were an elaborate hoax until they had me draw what I saw in one of them.
This was in a newspaper 30 or so years ago maybe. The image was accompanied by a depth-map image of what should be visible, but they covered that up. Then they asked if I’d looked at the newspaper before them because, even with my terrible art skills, it was clearly what was in the depth-map version.
I think they believed me in the end though.
thinking it’s a joke is REALLY funny to me
