Ah, the 1990s. It was a simpler time, when the web was going to be democratic and decentralised, you could connect your Windows 95 PC to the internet without worrying much about it being compromised, and freely download those rave music MP3s. Perhaps you had a Global Hypercolor T-shirt and spent a summer looking like the sweaty idiot you were, and it’s certain you desperately squinted at a magic eye image in a newspaper (remember newspapers?) trying to see the elephant or whatever it was. If you’d like to relive that experience, then [Dave Richeson] has a magic eye image generator for Microsoft Excel.
Unfortunately a proportion of the population including your scribe lack the ability to see these images, a seemingly noise-like pattern of dots on the page computationally generated to fool the visual processing portion of your brain to generate a 3D image. The Excel sheet allows you to create the images, but perhaps most interesting is the explanation of the phenomenon and mathematics which go along with it. Along with a set of test images depicting mathematical subjects, it’s definitely worth a look.
You can download a template and follow the instructions, and from very limited testing here we can see that LibreOffice doesn’t turn its nose up at it, either. Give it a go, and learn afresh the annoyance of trying to unfocus your eyes.
I was wondering what that was, but it turns out you cut off the upper part of the “x” from the image:
https://divisbyzero.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/x.png
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, I owned every Magic Eye book I could find back in the day! :-)
Thanks for posting. I can see these things, but it definitely didn’t look right.
That’s true! But there’s something strange with the algorithm!
Because my vision switches between seeing one big lone X and then three X being overlayed next to each other, with two dots on top of them.
I’ve seen that happen. Not even with 90s software (there were dot generators for Windows 3.x).
I’ve never seen that happen, I mean. And I had collected quite a few magic eye books. 😃
Uptdate. There are now two X that I sometimes see, with three dots or dashes floating on the upper and lower part of the two X.
The two X are wtitten on top of each other, slightly delayed.
As if you had used a typewriter to type over an existing letter.
Next time I try it’s a lone X again or the three Xes. Very strange.
It’s as if my vision has issues to correctly decipher the patterns.
Maybe the dots are to close to each others or interfere somehow?
I can see the double X too.
You view these illusions by spreading your eyes wider than the true vergence. The nearly repeating vertical patterns can also converge with your eyes directed one step apart, which is the intended way to view it, with the slight variations from perfect regularity creating the stereoscopic depth effect. But if you separate your eyes further to two steps, or three steps, the patterns converge another way. Essentially, you’re seeing double. The extra dots and dashes are where the double images overlap creating an extra layer of depth. See how they align with the nearby bits of X to the left and right, one layer down?
There’s also the convergent / divergent issue in stereograms. I wonder if that’s related here?
https://www.ime.usp.br/~otuyama/stereogram/basic/index.html
I would imagine that it would just make the magic image go “in” instead of “out”, but maybe also multiple images?
@Elliot Williams
I always do the cross-eye one. I thought the pattern was supposed to go in instead of out. Have I been doing it wrong all these years?
It does. I can focus it both ways, and that only affects the depth direction. I can also control my convergence enough that I can choose how many steps over to move the image without losing focus, so I can see the multiple patterns both cross-eyed and wall-eyed.
I used to be the king in “find the difference” games.
I had the same problem seeing duplicated symbols.
I finally realised I was too close to the screen. And then the image was clear.
Yeah it’s an ∞ with two dots over the right lobe in one direction, and like 3 x’s when you recess the image in the background.
It’s because you are focussing too far away. The image is so small on your phone that you focus past the first point where the pattern lines up, to the second point where it lines up. Try landscape mode and zooming in a bit.
PS It would be better to have the full image in the article, or properly cut out the “x” in the middle ;-)
Given that the author is incapable of seeing them, it’s not surprising the image is mis-cropped :D
I’ve put an infinitely better example image in for y’all. :)
Thanks! 😃
How lemniscate of you :-)
Djeez. I was reading all the comments about an X, and thinking something was wrong with me because I was not seeing an X but something quite different! :D
When I was at school and this was a thing I was pretty assured that the joke is in that people pretend seeing something.
I still cannot see anything even if I try all the instructions. Nada.
It’s a koala bear.
:-) Nope, it’s the mathematical variable “x” of which only the upper part is cropped out.. like I said, it poorly cut out from the original. Without looking at the original, one has no idea what that actually depicts.
It’s a bicycle.
It’s not x (at least I don’t see x), it’s an infinite loop – to my eyes anyway…
I should have read the other comments more thoroughly, Elliot changed the image….
Don’t feel badly, it takes quite a bit of practice… and a certain way of de-focusing your eyes, like as if you are starring at the infinite horizon. As soon as you focus your eyes, you have lost ;-) Once you see it, it like an “a ha!” moment – like “when the penny falls”.
It is thanks to your advice to stare into the infinite horizon that I was able to see the image in a magic eye for the first time in my life. It popped out immediately and persisted even as I scrolled up and down on my small screen. Thank you.
Hi, it really works. On a computer screen it’s a bit harder to see, though.
Make sure brightness is up and be close to the image, then go away slowly.
But don’t focus on the dots! If you do, it’s over.
Just try to stare into infinity (or try to squint), ignore everything.
After a while of going back and forth, your eyes may lock onto structures that come out of the blur.
Sorry, I’m not good at explaining.
The magic eye books had a better way of explaining it. 😅
Also, my friends back then couldn’t see the images, either.
They must mave thought I played tricks on them!
Good luck!
My problem is I find it trivially easy to cross my eyes to do these and impossible to do them the intended way. So I have to interpret them as negative space.
just swap the images in paint and then the cross eye trick works
I don’t know how long you can keep that joke as if there was some actual image :)
Reminds of the eyeglasses joke in the movie, the jerk.
https://youtu.be/qaz2hxZLycY
I can handle the images both by squinting (cross-eyed) and by relaxing the eye (letting them go near parallel). I find relaxing the eye a lot easier and an order of magnitude more comfortable, hence I always use this method and prefer images made for it.
There is a caveat though: with the method of “relaxing your eyes”, the features that make up the parts of the 3D form need to spaced out just a bit less than the distance between your eyes, so if you have a very large monitor and see the image enlarged, it may be super hard to form the 3D image, or not work at all. In that case, try making the image a bit smaller and see if that makes it easier.
Yes, this is a “blast from the 90s” (I had the Magic Eye books too!), but I still find them interesting, it’s a very nice and eerie feeling when the image forms and jumps out of the monitor :)
The point is to relax your focus and see beyond the picture. I’ve helped people learn to see these images back in the days when they were popular. There are a few clues on how to get this right. (Also for you @author!)
Take a blank paper, put the paper in landscape mode. Fold the left half on top of the right half, make the crease. Open back up, draw a dot on each side, vertically in the middle, appx 1 inch from the middle, left and right.
Move the blank paper in front of you, touching your nose and look straight on. Slowly move the paper to an arm’s length. Initially, you’ll see THREE DOTS, where the left eye is looking at the two dots and the right eye is looking at the same dots. The moment the right dot for the left eye and the left dot for the right eye overlap, that is the sweet spot which you need to keep. Train yourself first in keeping this position, then slowly increase the distance between your eyes and the paper.
In the example with the X initially, (this is a slightly harder picture to uncover) there are two red squares, quite in the middle. You can ‘shift’ into this ‘make three dots’ vision by coming close to the screen and then slowly move backwards. With this method, you’ll see an mathematical representation of ‘x’ coming into the foreground, whereas the background seems to be appx 25cm further away.
There is also the inverse trick possible, with the final result being a shaped hole in the image. You do a quite similar trick, where you can hold a pencil/pen/straw/something small and long shaped between the paper mentioned earlier and your eyes. Focus on the object, making the background/paper with dots becoming more blurry. You’ll have to play with the location of the pencil, but move it until you have the three dots again. At that point, you’ll get a strange focus problem; you’ll see the pencil seem to go up into the background, but it does not work trying to focus on this uprising of the background. The trick is to stay ‘unfocused’, keep focus on the pencil, keep the same focal tension going and then slowly move the pencil out of line of sight.
Once did a CTF and one flag was hidden in one of these. I imagine the goal was to reverse the process to get the original image from the 3D image, and no one but me could see it. Everyone was in awe as I just looked at it and read off the flag. Pretty neat day.
What is Excel? Is it the stolen idea from Visicalc from a company of thieves or something different?
It’s what you get if you order Quattro Pro from wish.com
I see a giant squirrel tapping keys on a laptop.
Glad to see I can still do it. Since I last saw and “autostareogram” I have had my eye lenses replaced. Not just yer average IOL implant, but as an informed guineapig for a major (possibly the major) lens manufacturer. In short, I have pretty much infinite focus on everything all at once but the world does not look as it once did – the brain remaps it after a month or three though. High rejection rate, not marketed, but I love ’em. Anyway I am pleased to report that those 3D patterns work just the same.
Unfortunately I have to say that on LibreOffice 6.4.7.2 at least, I can’t get it to create even the default image. Shame, as I have a Jolly Wrencher in CSV format…
Thanks, I was wondering if the technique would work on Open Source spreadsheets!
And interesting comment about the eye lens that you had “installed”.
Could you elaborate more the brain “remap”?
Sure. You asked :) It’s a diffractive lens, deliberately does different things to different wavelengths so some bit of everything is always in focus. After the (“rasin shaped”) natural lens was replaced, things looked a touch psychedelic out to 3 metres, and then went more rainbow-like. I was warned I’d probably go outside and think it had gone wrong! Took a lot of effort to make things out for a couple weeks, then they did the other eye. After a couple more weeks I was cleared to drive and shoot. Had to concentrate hard. Couldn’t easily track fast-moving targets for 3 months, and with everything in focus all the time dirty windows and wet windscreens at night gave me trouble for 6 months. But then concentration was not needed, the world looked “normal” again. You may have heard that the mind builds a model of the world in your head from your eyes, and you “see” that model. Well, I get that explanation. I’m now a well-placed competitive shooter with long guns and pistols at a national level.
At that time one of my friends was absolutely hooked by this. He was even able to ‘on the fly’ edit a text file on his computer to generate ascii art with magic eye effects. You could see the 3D effect develop while he was editing/typing. Absolutely fascinating.
It’s easy to overshoot and latch into the wrong image. If you focus on two adjacent patterns and try to have them overlap it will work. Before I went a few patterns too far and it resulted in repeated patterns with 3 or 4 levels deep instead of just 2 levels. It works better on paper then on a monitor.
I wonder if there’s any connection between neurodivergence and the ability (or lack there of) to see these things. I would say my brain generally has very good image processing, seeing patterns and subtleties many don’t. These things on the other hand, like many I see nothing but patterned noise.
Nice to know i am not a one off. Thanks. However i dont want to trade what capabilities i do have just to see pictures
It’s not a brain thing as much as it’s an eye thing, you have to be able to point your eyes in a way you don’t normally.
I found that by focussing on my reflection in the screen I could see these, and after I’d done it a few times I can ‘unfocus’ spontaneously. Although, as I’ve got older I’ve found it takes longer and longer to get my eyes back to focusing normally.
I had a computer vision and scientific computing classes in the early to mid 2000s and in one of those classes we learned the math behind auto stereograms. I recently rerun those mathematica programs and they still work beautifully. The only thing I would add in now would be two dots as gods so that when the two dots merge you know the 3D image should pop out at you.
The principal by how they work involves your eyes scanning left to right, so if you rotate them 90° you can’t see the image.
What about people with a different reading order?
Nothing to do with scanning. It’s about presenting a different image to each eye to give the impression of depth. The image needs to be aligned with the orientation of your eyes, which is why it won’t work if rotated 90°. A person with vision in only one eye is not be able to see an autostereogram.
It’s a little known fact that the eyes can roll too, so you don’t have to be exactly aligned in the horizontal plane. Just close enough.
Just what I need, playing airplane with my eyes.
Not one “a schooner is a sailboat” comment in the entire post or comment section. Shameful.
That kid is back on the escalator again!
Thanks for fixing the image, much better now! :-)
I need some of whatever you all are smoking, i’m just seeing noise images 😂🤷♂️
Try to look behind your phone/screen. Let your pattern lock float freely and you’ll eventually get it.
Presbyopia makes this a tad harder, I just found out. Need to regrow new eyes.
Stopped reading when I saw the use of Chat GPT to produce a PPM