eyeball it
September 8, 2004 9:49 PM   Subscribe

Stereoscopy. (1 image nsfw)
posted by protocool (16 comments total)
 
How does it work?
posted by Quartermass at 10:02 PM on September 8, 2004


The easiest way, Quartermass, is to cross your eyes and use the lower pair for each image. Do it slowly and watch the two (now "four") images move across one another until they overlap in the middle, and it looks like there are three images. The middle one will be 3-D.

I especially liked the Golden Gate Bridge one. And, oddly, the bread seemed really, really cool. Very nicely done. Thanks, protocol.
posted by soyjoy at 10:31 PM on September 8, 2004


Man, this is hard to do with the computer screen. It's like the magic eye stuff. Defocus your eyes to a focal point behind the pictures so the dots superimpose into three dots, and that should "pop" the image.
posted by apathy0o0 at 10:33 PM on September 8, 2004


I had a bit of a play with making these early last year. You can see the (fairly scant) fruits of my labour here (47KB) and here (63KB). The first picture was the view from my desk when we moved offices, whilst the second is of a large Gollum which decorated one of the cinemas in town for the duration of "The Two Towers". Sorry, no little dots, but the technique I use involves crossing my eyes until the pictures have swapped places, and then carefully returning my eyes to their normal focus, stopping just as the two pictures overlap in the middle.

Of course, the ubiquitous Jason Kottke has had a go as well, with superior results (he also has links to some rad examples).
posted by John Shaft at 11:22 PM on September 8, 2004


what i really want to know is why the images look smaller when you have your eyes crossed
posted by MrLint at 11:39 PM on September 8, 2004


Leprechaun

Kiefer Sutherland and a bunch of other kids beat me up in grade 4 for wearing a hat like that to school. I thought it was cool (technically, it was a Robin Hood hat. I got it at Disney World); hell, it's even cooler in 3D.
posted by dobbs at 11:44 PM on September 8, 2004


kiefer sutherland?
posted by jimmy at 12:05 AM on September 9, 2004


He carries the air of thuggery.
posted by John Shaft at 12:07 AM on September 9, 2004


why is it that the cross-eyes picture is easier to look at? you'd think the "looking straight ehead" picture would be.
posted by bob sarabia at 12:16 AM on September 9, 2004


Your eyes are more used to being crossed (which happens when you view stuff close by, or to a lesser extent anything closer than infinity), whereas for the straight version you'd have to put them parallel or even slightly diverging, which you never use outside of weird human constructs.
posted by fvw at 12:37 AM on September 9, 2004


I'm generally pretty good at "looking deep" to view stereoscopic images, but with my monitor setup most of these are well over 3 in. apart. That's insane.
posted by Galvatron at 1:52 PM on September 9, 2004


That's the most frustrating time I've had trying to see a woman naked, and that's saying something. It helps to position your finger halfway (or whatever) to the monitor and stare at it, moving it to make the dots merge. I usually look deep too, but they're too far apart.
posted by callmejay at 2:05 PM on September 9, 2004


I was always able to get the magic eye posters and other single image stereograms to fuse using parallel vision. Crossing my eyes to that degree is more uncomfortable for me. But with these dual image stereograms I just can't do it. I've tried with my face near or far from the screen, with or without my glasses (I'm somewhat nearsighted) and nothing is working. Does anyone have any other tricks to offer?

On more careful reading: what Galvatron and callmejay said.
posted by Songdog at 6:00 PM on September 9, 2004


I can't explain my trick, other than "have a lot of Magic Eye photocopies on your binder during high school history class."
posted by kevspace at 6:06 PM on September 9, 2004


Don't try the looking deep version. Use the cross-eyed one. Galvatron, I think you may be underestimating the degree to which your eyes can comfortably cross. 3 inches isn't that hard to merge, is it?
posted by soyjoy at 9:28 PM on September 9, 2004


i have a book of them around somewhere, and in it i find that parallel is far easier.

but in those the parallel ones are too far apart to "do" easily. crosseyed is the way to go for them, pity i can't explain how to do it...
posted by knapah at 3:26 PM on September 10, 2004


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