Comments on: eyeball it

eyeball it

protocool — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 21:49:41 -0800

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 22:02:48 -0800

How does it work?

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 22:31:53 -0800

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.

By: apathy0o0

apathy0o0 — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 22:33:45 -0800

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.

By: John Shaft

John Shaft — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 23:22:59 -0800

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).

By: MrLint

MrLint — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 23:39:29 -0800

what i really want to know is why the images look smaller when you have your eyes crossed

By: dobbs

dobbs — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 23:44:31 -0800

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.

By: jimmy

jimmy — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 00:05:38 -0800

kiefer sutherland?

By: John Shaft

John Shaft — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 00:07:18 -0800

He carries the air of thuggery.

By: bob sarabia

bob sarabia — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 00:16:41 -0800

why is it that the cross-eyes picture is easier to look at? you'd think the "looking straight ehead" picture would be.

By: fvw

fvw — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 00:37:41 -0800

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.

By: Galvatron

Galvatron — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 13:52:17 -0800

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.

By: callmejay

callmejay — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 14:05:47 -0800

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.

By: Songdog

Songdog — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 18:00:08 -0800

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.

By: kevspace

kevspace — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 18:06:43 -0800

I can't explain my trick, other than "have a lot of Magic Eye photocopies on your binder during high school history class."

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 21:28:24 -0800

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?

By: knapah

knapah — Fri, 10 Sep 2004 15:26:16 -0800

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...