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
Now that you’ve figured it out, behold: Stereograms!
The above satellite images from NASA allow you to SEE the topography in 3D.
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.
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.
Off to find my house!
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.
…i prefer wall-eyed stereograms because cross-eyed orientation makes the picture look tiny…
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. They require stereoscopic vision. When I was doing research on 3D displays about 10% of subjects had to be rejected because they were stereo blind. They had no idea they were that way.
One woman said that explains why she had the nickname clunk in high school. She had a habit of rearending cars.
Lmao clunk is brutal
I’m one of the stereo blind. I was kind of glad when I found out from the eye doctor. It explained why I could rarely catch a baseball without getting hit.
So depending on why you might be able to train it. If you don’t have a lazy eye and have good vision you may want to look into it.
If your brain is just not fusing two good images there is a good chance you can train it to do so. Having done experiments in this field I can tell you it makes a measurable difference in performance.
A good read on the subject is below. The part where she first sees a tree in 3D is a good example of what you are missing.
Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist’s Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions by Susan R Barry
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
Being legally blind in one eye precludes me from using those
Same here, before I found out it is literally impossible for me to see them I had one of the books and I would stare at it for hours trying to make it work. Of all the annoyances of being half blind, not being able to see magic eyes is the one that bothers me most.
Yep.
If you can do it, you can sometimes use that skill to quickly compare whether two adjacent vertical images are identical. If they are, you will just see a single version of the image as normal. If they are different, you will easily see a ‘fuzzy’ part of the image that won’t resolve and stay still (hard to describe, it’s like when I try to read text in a dream).
A practical application I use now and then is when I want to compare two columns of data on a screen. Use the magic eye technique to overlap the columns and any differences will be immediately obvious, even with a lot of data.
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.
Yes.
The instructions say don’t cross your eyes but that’s horseshit and probably why so many people fail to see them.
My method is to cross my eyes, then uncross them slowly until the 3d effect appears, then hold on that position.
But then you see them inverted.
3d cross eyed pictures and magic eye work in similar but different ways
Yup you want to focus farther than the picture. Crossing your eyes makes you focus closer.
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?
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
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.
Nope. Never figured it out
I can see them.
Or at least I could. When LGR recently made a video about them, I was having a very bad time viewing them. I was either too drunk or not used to seeing them with this TV setup or I just need new glasses. Probably the last one.
How far away from the tv were you?
Tried various distances, that didn’t help too much. I’m afraid I have to hold to the theory that I’m officially old now and need bifocals.
I first looked at a pic on my phone and it worked so i thought it would look even better if I put it on my tv. Did that and I wasn’t able to get it to work, googled something like “can’t see magic eye on large tv screen but can on phone” and apparently it’s a lot more difficult on large screens. Or maybe you just are old lol
I wasn’t able to see this on my phone. Almost gave up hope. But. HOLY CRAP. Re-watching the LGR video on my desktop monitor and I can see the stuff again! So… thanks, I guess!
As someone with a lazy eye I can control, stereograms are ludicrously easy for me to see.
I can view the convergent (cross-eyed) ones no problem. I managed once to focus on the divergent ones with like 30 minutes of practice, but I had trouble focusing normally afterwards for like an hour so I haven’t tried since.
It’s a skill. You get better with practice.
Ya I was wondering the whole time if this was going to cause some long term damage
Absolutely loved them as a kid! Had a quite a few books.
You can do them two different ways. The normal way with the object popping out towards you and an inverted way with crossing your eyes that inverts the shape.
I’m pretty sure I did it the cross eyed way. I’m doo trunk to understand how to do it another way
Bring the page close to your nose, let your eyes kinda naturally loose focus from distance. Then slowly start to pull the page back and you should get it.
Kinda difficult to describe.
Check back when you are sober and see if you get it to work.
Maybe I have it mixed up then because the way I’m doing it is losing focus and letting it adjust until I see something. I thought I was going crosseyed but I didn’t have a mirror so I can’t be sure.
The way this works is that the image is designed to appear ‘beyond’ the surface it is printed on. It’s much easier to relax your eyes and pretend you’re looking at what’s ‘behind’ the paper. Kind of like 3d chalk art on the road in a way.
The other way of crossing your eyes works because you’re swapping the left and right eye, which gives a different, inverted appearance. Instead of a foreground image popping out of the background, it looks like the other way. Like looking in a box, kinda.
I can do both, but the latter is more difficult, sometimes requires a specific distance, and can be painful if you force it. If the image is too big, you may only be able to see a part of it. I think the first method is easier to do and to learn/train. Either way, you aren’t looking at what’s ‘on the surface’.
…
The best way I can explain is: pretend you’re sitting on the toilet, really tired and you have nothing to look at so you just lose focus and gaze at random stuff. When the tiles or cracks start to make pictures that aren’t there, that’s kind of the effect you want.
I’m fairly certain I’m doing the distance thing but at the same time I am fairly certain I am looking inside a 3d box
https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicEye/s/ogZeqQWwpY
That’s the piece that made it click for me
Oh that one is a good one, it’s very busy. Using the first method the trees are on the ‘bottom’ and everything progressively pops out with the fish/turtle on ‘top’.
The other way is reverse, the trees are on the ‘top’ and the fish are on the ‘bottom’ (like I’m looking in that ‘box’). It’s also really hard to see the whole picture this way, but that’s just me.
Also, ‘In a Box’ might not be the best analogy, you can make one that intentionally feels like you’re looking inside something – it’s just that most of these are made to pop out at you.
For the cross eye version you just need to hold out the page at normal viewing distance and cross your eyes till the 3d image pops.
Sounds like you are doing it the regular way. Which is the more difficult one for most people that have issues with magic eyes.
Glad you got to experience them!
I’m glad too, I have so many things to look at now lol
Here’s another one for ya! If you do it the right way you’ll clearly see the turtles head pop out towards you and with the cross eye way it’s quite difficult to recognize the head when it’s pushed backwards.
Haha that’s the pic that I looked at and realized I could do it
This works, but the quicker method for me was to hold the book over my head, out of my line of sight while I focused my eyes on something a little farther away (a few feet away is fine). Then you can simply move the book downward into your field of vision while refusing to let your eyes refocus. It should be blurry, because you’re still focusing past it, despite it being right in front of your face. Then just relax and let your brain do the work.
This method got by far the quickest and most reliable results for me, most pop suddenly into view in just a couple seconds.
I think this method works best because you’re using established muscle memory to focus your eyes on an object at a measurable, consistent distance, and then just not letting them change. Removes several variables from the equation.
I think I usually saw the inverted version. I could make out the shapes, but they never popped out.
I can see the 3D, but struggle to put together what they are sometimes because I don’t have colors to put the image together.
