Go cross-eyed.

June 17, 2018 8:50 PM

OMDO [itch.io] “Plays just like DOOM, except every frame is a random dot autostereogram. If you don't know what that is, you should read more about it here, but the gist is that you have to either go cross-eyed or wall-eyed in order to see the game. Otherwise it just looks like a bunch of random dots.” [via: PC Gamer]
posted by Fizz (41 comments total)

In my case, it seems they are ALWAYS a bunch of random dots. :sigh:
posted by Samizdata at 8:52 PM on June 17, 2018 [6 favorites]

My favourite comment for this game from itch.io:

minecraftgamerpc66: “It's to hard to see.”

posted by Fizz at 8:55 PM on June 17, 2018 [5 favorites]

Yeah I can't seem to make this work for me either. I can't go cross-eyed or stay that way at all when I'm trying to focus on the screen as well. Like, I know how to make myself go cross-eyed, but looking at the screen stops it. :(
posted by AnhydrousLove at 8:57 PM on June 17, 2018

For all those MacOS gamers like me, here is a video of some gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXGlwQvRDCE. If you can't see anything, try forcing the video quality to 720p.
posted by isnotchicago at 9:03 PM on June 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

I watched the video isnotchicago posted, and, well... the game seems like an amazing way to give yourself a headache, and not much else. And I say this as someone who has a very easy time crossing my eyes for Magic Eye pictures.
posted by Green Winnebago at 9:11 PM on June 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

Welp, that's it. There's nowhere else for gaming to go from here. Wrap it up, boys.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:14 PM on June 17, 2018 [8 favorites]

Oh, a sail boat game?
posted by Artw at 9:23 PM on June 17, 2018 [16 favorites]

Artw: Actually, it’s a schooner game.
posted by robcorr at 9:40 PM on June 17, 2018 [11 favorites]

A schooner is a sailboat, stupidhead.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:47 PM on June 17, 2018 [11 favorites]

This is wonderful. Slow magic-eye focussers, like me, if watching the YT excerpt, just hit pause, wait, find it, then hold that focus, rewind and start again. Absolutely does work, no harder to see than a normal magic-eye thing once you've found the correct distance behind the image to focus on, and what a treat to see that stuff in motion.
posted by motty at 9:50 PM on June 17, 2018

Oh, look, it’s 1995 again.

Magic Eye is still bullshit YOU LYING FAKERS, Doom is still just overhyped Wolfenstein, and 14-year-old me can’t muster up enough disaffected grungitude to shrug out an adequate amount of ironic “enjoyment” of either without a can of OK Soda in hand and a long-sleeve t-shirt under my short-sleeve t-shirt.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:02 PM on June 17, 2018 [12 favorites]

Hard to say in which I’ll die faster.
posted by notyou at 10:17 PM on June 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

Actually, it's 2004 again.
posted by Television Name at 10:28 PM on June 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

I so want to play this. I don't want to try and make WINE work. DOOM always brings back memories of Purple Frog Editor and IPX networking over packet radio drivers. Three player doom over a serial line outside the house to the other roommate and a modem to the third and a spare phone line. Early multiplayer gaming.

I could maybe get into this if it wasn't .EXE :(
posted by zengargoyle at 11:09 PM on June 17, 2018

Normally I don't have trouble with the magic eye images, but I had to help myself out by holding a finger up in front of my face for this--I'm guessing because of the constant fluctuations.

Anyway, I couldn't get very far, but this is neat! It's hard to locate and target enemies, especially because the draw distance is quite short. Shorter than the distance from which they can shoot you, I think. I did, after a few tries, clear out the opening room, but I couldn't find my way out.

One possible improvement: instead of having an ordinary crosshair, maybe this could have a pair situated so that the two would overlap once your eyes were correctly crossed/uncrossed. The ordinary crosshair is useless once your vision is focused correctly, and a cue about where to focus might make it easier to see.
posted by egregious theorem at 11:17 PM on June 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh hey, it's migraine vision.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:28 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Doesn’t look like anything to me.
posted by The Potate at 1:30 AM on June 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

I mean, this is really cool, though. I used to love those Magic Eye books, but I'm worried this will give me a headache if I do it for more than a few seconds at a time. To say nothing of motion sickness, which - I mean, if anything was ever going to give someone motion sickness, I'd think "a 3D game, but you make it 3D by crossing your eyes and focusing on a bunch of swirling shapes" would be a good contender.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:30 AM on June 18, 2018

Slow magic-eye focussers, like me, if watching the YT excerpt, just hit pause, wait, find it, then hold that focus, rewind and start again.

In my case this would mean pausing it, maybe printing it out, and squinting at it suspiciously for three weeks, then briefly seeing something, then quickly losing it, then never seeing it again and only half-believing that I ever saw it in the first place...
posted by pipeski at 1:48 AM on June 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

It is definitely the case that enemies can shoot you from beyond the draw distance. It's interesting, though. I might like a version that was just a walking sim. This plus Proteus would entertain me for a while.
posted by surlyben at 2:16 AM on June 18, 2018

I watched the video isnotchicago posted and it looks cool, but essentially like playing doom in a snowstorm.

I can do these illusions easily and almost instantaneously, so if we are invaded by autostereogrammed demons from a hell dimension I may be humanity's last hope.
posted by Query at 4:40 AM on June 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

This is a cool gimmick. I don't know if DOOM is the best use case, although I can see why it was chosen. It seems like it would suit either a horror game or something more strategic than a straight up action FPS.

I remember reading an old Ursula Le Guin short story about a psychiatrist in the future looking at the patterns of a patient's brainwaves using some scitech doohickey. Familiar images would emerge for the trained observer, and the task was to fit some sort of coherent shape or narrative on them. For some reason that is the kind of activity that an interactive 3D stereoscope reminds me of.
posted by rollick at 4:40 AM on June 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Oh man. I remember starting up Doom in ~1998 on a Linux server over telnet and piping through an ascii renderer and playing it remotely in an old amber CRT VT220, and once even on a VT100. Felt like a cyberpunk god. Good times.
posted by cyclotronboy at 4:48 AM on June 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

rollick: I'm pretty sure that Le Guin short story is anthologized in Compass Rose, but I can't remember which title it is.
posted by HeroZero at 4:53 AM on June 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

The Diary of the Rose
posted by runcifex at 5:19 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

OMDO: The eye mutilator!
posted by Greasy Eyed Gristle Man at 7:18 AM on June 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Got it to work pretty well on a lower graphics setting in a smaller window. Navigation is kinda fun. Couldn't find the enemies shooting at me tho. And boy howdy is it good at crashing.
posted by es_de_bah at 7:54 AM on June 18, 2018

I love that this exists, and it's a super cool idea, but in practice I couldn't do it without getting major vertigo :( But I still love just knowing that this is out there in the world. I wonder how detailed you can get with the graphics? AKEQU?
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 8:01 AM on June 18, 2018

I used to be able to see magic-eye pictures on CRTs by focusing on my reflection in the glass.
That doesn't work for me on my flat screens, and I can't find any CRTs around the house.
posted by MtDewd at 8:06 AM on June 18, 2018

Is wearing a long sleeve t-shirt under a short sleeve t-shirt not a thing any more? Someone needs to tell my closet.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:57 AM on June 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Depends. How many sizes too big for you are they?
posted by Sys Rq at 10:01 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I can see these illusions just fine, but I can't enjoy them because my brain spends the whole time arguing with itself:

"This CAN'T be good for your eyes!"

"What? It's EXACTLY the same as focusing on a thing twice as far away. Your eye muscles don't know the difference."

"My eye muscles can DEFINITELY feel that they're doing something wrong."

"If anything it should be BETTER for your eyes than staring at a screen two feet away all the time."
posted by straight at 10:37 AM on June 18, 2018

"Is wearing a long sleeve t-shirt under a short sleeve t-shirt not a thing any more? Someone needs to tell my closet."

Some time called for you but it was on a phone with a cord connected to the wall.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:46 AM on June 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

This might be enough to convince me to try Doom. I've never played a first-person shooter; have no interest in the genre; I suck at hand-eye coordination games... but I love autostereograms and I especially love animated ones.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:51 PM on June 18, 2018

Some time called for you but it was on a phone with a cord connected to the wall.

Ah, I see what happened. The flannel shirt tied around my waist pulled the phone cord out of the wall.
posted by humboldt32 at 1:59 PM on June 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

i could never do the magic eye stuff and it sucks and this reminded me that i can't do it and it sucks too ARG
posted by numaner at 2:29 PM on June 18, 2018

A bit of a tangent, but there are some folks making really pretty stereogram animations, like this one.
posted by treepour at 3:56 PM on June 18, 2018

My problem is that I can get the stereograms to work, but they're inverted, so I see a stack of rectangles coming out of the screen with notches around the edges. How do I flip it?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:06 PM on June 18, 2018

You’re crossing your eyes (shallow focus). You need to go the other way, which is completely fucking impossible.

I don’t know why they don’t do it the other way. It’s a lot easier to intentionally go cross-eyed than wall-eyed.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:28 PM on June 18, 2018

There's an option to switch it.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 11:27 PM on June 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Back in 1994, Bullfrog's Magic Carpet had a built-in stereogram mode that worked exactly like those MagicEye pictures. I could never get it to work with my bad eyes, but my brothers insisted it worked. Magic Carpet also had a red/blue glasses mode for 3D, which I got to work with transparent Lego pieces!

Here's a video podcast with a discussion of it.
posted by Enkidude at 6:24 AM on June 19, 2018