HELLO wanna know how i wasted my entire afternoon + evening today?
āØ s t e r e o g r a m s āØš
anyway def feeling guilty rn especially since i still hv scholarship essays to write (HELP ME) but oh well here we are :D
STEREOGRAMS ARE SOOO COOOOOOOLLLL UGHHHHHH
basically stereograms (or magic eyes) are those images that show up as 3d if u focus ur eyes in a certain way. example:
im telling ya rn, if uve nvr seen these or tried these before, PLEASE. U HAVEEEE TO SEE THEM AT LEAST ONCE IN UR LIFE. just believe me, words cant even describe how awesome they look, u absolutely have to see it for urself aaa š (promise me u'll try them after reading this post okay :>)
i was first introduced to them by my dad like years ago, and we used to search up these magic eye imgs on our phones at night and try to see them, and i swear we'd look so crazy holding up our phone to our eyes and being like "THERES A BIRD THERES A BIRD" while staring at a completely random image that clearly didnt contain a bird HAHAHAH yea then last night, i saw a colour illusion while on my phone (those things where theyre the same colour but it doesn't look like it cuz of the colours surrounding it ykwim), and i was reminded of illusions and then suddenly rmbred the magic eye illusions which i completely forgot existed for YEARS. had to try one immediately and it took some time for me to see the img BUT IT'S STILL AS AMAZING AS THE FIRST TIME I SAW IT šš
but i realised i nvr understood (1) how they work, and (2) HOW DOES ONE EVEN CREATE THEMMM??? yep so uhhhh look where we are now šš
(1) some introduction ig
u can find a few of these magic eye illusions here. oh and heads up, when u click on the img, it "spoils" the illusion by showing u the img that ur supposed to see. aight basically, the way it works is that u gotta focus ur eyes in a certain way, and a 3d img will pop up right in front of you when u do it right. oh yea forgot to mention, but i recommend using ur phone, bigger devices arent rlly ideal. it takes some practice to finally get it but once u do, it's sooo worth it. just trust me, don't give up and keep trying until u see it huhu - basically u want ur eyes to be like this:
personally, my technique was to stare at smth in the distance, then without shifting my focus, i'd put my phone in front of my eyes, and adjust the distance between my phone and eyes until i finally see it. another technique is to put ur phone rlly close to ur face (so what u see will be blurry at first), then back up ur phone till ya hit the right spot. some of the imgs u might find online also hv 2 dots on the top to help guide ur eyes (ur supposed to see 3 dots to get it right). anyway im too lazy to explain anymore, but yea u can search up online to learn how to see these images brr. it might be hard at first, but keep trying and with practice, u'll get much better. like i got pretty good at it and i can do it without moving my phone now, my eyes just know how to adjust themselves LOL (such a useful skill fr) š„
once u see them, they'll be crystal clear. like they'll pop out right in front of you. oh and my tip is, once u get it try not to blink lol, cuz i sometimes lose the effect when i blink. anddd once u see the img, just RELAX ur eyes - if u redirect ur focus u'll lose the effect duh. also u shd be able to slowly move ur eyes around the img, just dont be too fast la
if ur still hving issues seeing them then UHHH this is ur sign that ur vision skill issue sia HAJDNFNG š like apparently it's harder to see if one eye is significantly weaker than the other (and u dont wear glasses to fix that), or if u hv astigmatism, or some visual processing disorder. sucks to be u la cuz ur missing out big time bro šš
(2) the juicy part: WHAT IS THIS SORCERYYYYY??? šØšØ
the explanation of how these work is actually surprisingly simple
these 2 vids explain it amazingly so i highly recommend u check em out:
but here's a brief rundown anyway (in dumbed-down terms) - so the great-grandfather of these magic eyes are random dot stereograms (RDS) which look like this:
similar to magic eyes, a 3d img will appear when u stare at them in the right way. now, i understand how they work in principle, but i literally can't get myself to see the image sadge, legit ive wasted like AT LEASTTT 3 hrs tryna view them T-T (i heard that RDSs are harder to view than magic eyes tho bcs they strain ur eyes more idk) but anyway i'll keep trying tho hehe #persistence
hmm bef we proceed, i shd probably mention, for all these stereograms, we'll assume parallel view (i.e. the virtual img is behind the real img), and not cross view (i.e. the virtual img is in front of the real img), but just ignore this convention if u don't get what that means.
SO how are they created? basically, start with a grid of random B/W pixels, and make an exact duplicate of this. so then we'll have 2 identical images side by side. now, when u look at these, what will happen is that ur left eye will perceive the left img, while ur right eye will perceive the right img - then these imgs will converge to form one img. this diagram explains it better:
okay so since these 2 imgs are the same, the identical imgs will just fuse tgt and nothin special will happen womp womp. BUT the magic happens when u displace some pixels from one of the imgs by a tiny amount. so for example, i could take a square of pixels, and shift each of those pixels by one pixel to the right. (then the missing space on the left can just be filled in with other random pixels.) oh and ofc u only shift the pixels for one of the imgs la, the other img is untouched.
OKAY SO THENNNNN, when u try to view it again, the 2 imgs will fuse right, and the pixels which are the same will just "overlap" kinda, but for the pixels that were shifted, ur left eye and right eye are gonna perceive slightly shifted imgs SO THENN when the img fuses, ur depth perception will basically kick in and it'll show up as 3d AAAA ITS SO COOL AND I HOPE THAT EXPLANATION MADE SENSE HAHAHAJDJFSSHHF
and magic eyes (aka the cooler grandsons) use the same concept, except it's one img, but technically tho it's a bunch of repeating imgs arranged horizontally. word stereograms could help u better understand em:
so u can see that the text repeats itself, but at a certain point, a character will be added/removed (essentially analogous to shifted pixels in RDSs), and so its at this point where the 3d will pop out. but these are just the basic ones - to create 3d imgs with more complicated depth to it, check out video 2 which explains the algorithm for generating magic eyes from a given depth map wee woo
okay sigh so that's the magic of magic eyes revealed ig lol - but hey, still pretty magical to me :>
gl and hf checking out magic eyes heheh, oh and just lmk if ur hving troubles viewing the magic eyes, i could er mybe try to help, but dont give up bcs the magic is pretty worth it imo āØ