My time has come!
The above stereographic image is for cross-eyed viewing (most stereograms are wall-eyed, so you may need to put your finger in front of your screen until this one comes into focus)
This is an image of Honolulu, Hawaii, published by NASA. Note Diamond Head (the volcanic crater) in the south.
Here are some other stereopairs published by JPL:
Wheeler Ridge, California
Mount Saint Helens
Salt Lake Valley, Utah
Wellington, New Zealand
Oh, also, I really miss the old JMOL molecular models that you could view in cross- or wall-eyed stereo. Anyone know what software is required to make those?
I love these so much thanks! On YouTube there’s also a ton in video format, like this one by Brian May.
Amazing! Thanks!
Cool effect. For me, it only works on a screen where the white dots are roughly the distance of my eyes. So not on a phone.
TIL I am a walleyed viewer
Well, its the first time that i manage to see one of these magic eye images… but I need to ask. Most of this seem to be inverted (i see mountains as sinks, lakes and rivers are higher than peaks). Is this intended? I’m interpretint it wrong?
These ones require crossing your eyes, whereas the other type you relax them (like looking further away).
I find the other type way easier and struggle with cross eye ones. For these images you could swap the left and right portions to get it working the other way.
Actually, I made a version for wall-eyed viewing in one of the other top-level comments.
Yes, I saw them afterwards. Nice work! I can do the cross eyed ones with some effort but the wall eyed ones (I didn’t know the name before) I could see instantly and with far better focus.
Boo, these are cross-view, not parallel-view.
I can never get the parallel view to work. My eyes want to focus too quickly. :( cross view is so much easier to me. I wish they came in both all the time.
I can still view these, but it’s much much harder for me.
I don’t know why parallel isn’t the default.
Cross eyed is so much more uncomfortable. It also looks smaller than parallel to me.
It varies per person. I for one can’t view wall-eyed, only cross-eyed.
Same here basically, cross-eyed viewing is super easy for me but I have to work for minutes to perform wall-eyed viewing. I was really excited to see a post with cross-eyed stereograms.
I have to exert constant effort to cross my eyes, don’t you?
Also can’t do parallel, only cross view. I only have to use effort for the first few seconds, as soon as the two images are aligned, my focus snaps to it and I can relax and keep the focus without having to think about it.
It does cause some mild strain if I’m doing it for too long (like going through a book of these), but if I’m cross-eyed for a just a couple of minutes its no problem.
Huh. For me I can very easily wall-eye, I just let my focus drift. Going cross-eyed requires serious and constant strain, and doing the trick with my finger in front of the screen doesn’t work – I can get the dots aligned but if I try to focus on the screen or move my finger I lose it instantly.
Are you farsighted?
Nope, slightly nearsighted (~20/25).
What is parallel ?
Parallel are the ones where you put the image between you and your point of focus, instead of your point of focus being between you and the image.
That seems hard to do
I’ve tried it (to get reverse-depth) and didn’t manage to…
Lots of people can really easily go cross-eyed and look at these with no practice whatsoever. Fewer people can do the parallel kind with no practice or with the amount of practice they’ve already done.
I grew up with the Magic Eye books and have never been able to do cross-view as a result.
If you want wall-eyed viewing, you can just download the image and
mirror flipswap it in an image editor. I also personally prefer wall-eyed viewing.This is exactly how JPL posted them, and they did cross-eyed viewing because the image jumps out of the page, rather than in (I presume).
Incorrect. You don’t mirror flip it, you swap the images to convert between cross/parallel view.
Source: I wrote my own stereogram software, I know the difference.
Is that available somewhere?
Ah yes! Sorry, the stupid thing is, I knew that and said that to someone else last night! Thank you stranger!
I have never ever in my life managed to make these work, I have no idea what’s wrong with my eyes
you and me both. i can make the third dot appear, but the second i look away from it the effect is gone. and now my eyes hurt!
Try using a bigger screen, or moving your screen further from your face. When moving your focus off the dot, move it to the closest part of the image and then move from there. It can help to align a feature in your periphery before moving to it.
Normally it means you picked the wrong distance to the screen!
Tinker with that first - it might be much further or closer than you think, all depending on your screen and eyes.
Also, a hint: the central circle should stay straight in the middle, not closer to one or the other. At that point, below there will be three equally sized pictures, and then you can switch your sight to the central one.
It’s a schooner!
You dumb bastard, it’s not a schooner it’s a sailboat.
A schooner IS a sail boat, STUPID HEAD
I’m cross eyed. Can’t get a third dot. Boooooooo
Did you try the wall-eyed versions below? Those should be smaller on a mobile screen, and many people (myself included) find wall-eyed versions easier.
No I didn’t. Thank you. I’ll check it out.
Why do all of these look inverted to me? Like, what should be a mountain is a deep hole in the ground.
These are cross-view, your probably using the focus at infinity trick instead.
Wow I had no idea it could be done that way. Just tried doing it and the image is way blurrier when ‘inverted’. I am near sighted. Does this mean it applies to illusions too?
Yup. That was exactly it. I was thinking “I know how to do these” and not even paying attention to the instructions at the bottom.
Wow, I had the same problem as the one you replied to and I thought you were making a joke I didn’t get but I stand corrected. You were absolutely 100% right.
Turns out I was focusing at infinity, didn’t even realize it was a different thing than crossing my eyes until I tried to cross my eyes first before focusing on the pictures…
Very cool, thanks.
Yeah, I’m also seeing them reversed.
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.
So weird. I can do this with my finger in the way but for some reason cannot hold my eyes in that position - as soon as I take the finger away my eyes unfocus. Maybe because it’s do uncomfortable to hold that eye pose?
Yeah, try the wall-eyed version I posted as a top-level comment
yeah that’s much easier
It’s not very active, but still has good content.
The destruction of the coastline in Honolulu is so sad to see :(
I miss r/crossview and the short love r/crossviewnsfw. Damn greed ruining everything good in the world.
Really can’t seem to understand how this works.
Never did any “magic eyes” or whatever books as a kid, so maybe I just don’t have any practice in this, but whether I try to cross my eyes focusing beyond the screen, or “above” the screen, I can’t get the resulting middle image to look like anything other than a blur.
Perhaps my eyes are somehow odd on the other hand. I don’t need glasses though, so I’m a bit skeptical that’s it.
I tried all the guides I found in this thread, including the floating hot dogs, attempting varying distances both with the screen and the finger, then trying the wall-eyed variants too for all of them, none of them work for me.
So odd. It seems it should work. No idea what I am doing wrong here.
Or is this the joke? To get people to squint for minutes on end on their screen?
I promise this isn’t a troll. In your case, it may be that your eyes are having difficulty focusing on nonexistent objects. If they’re blurry, it’s not that your eyes aren’t crossing, but rather that they are out-of-focus. Eyes naturally focus the lenses to bring near or distant objects into clarity, but when I was first doing magic eye images a long time ago, it also took me a while to convince my eyes that they needed to focus on the images.
My guess is that, since the actual images are on the screen at distance A, but your eyes are crossing as if they’re looking at distance B, your eyes are auto-focusing for objects at B, but the images are still actually at A, so they appear out-of-focus.
I was gonna tell you it was a meme and they don’t actually work. This being in science meme I thought they might actually be stereographic images, but it’s from so far away you wouldn’t be able to discern any 3D-ness. But I was wrong the height is exaggerated. For me the walleyed version worked for me, I just had to zoom in on one image and hold my phone quite far away.
They do work. It takes some practice to get them though. At first I used a pencil or something to focus on while I made the two dots merge together, stayed focussed on the pencil until my brain “saw” the image behind it, then it sort of locked in and I could take the pencil away. I’ve done so many of them now that I can just go crosseyed to bring the dots together, then look at the middle picture.
The 3D image works by tricking your brain into seeing a third image that isn’t really there. We’re used to constructing 3D images from two slightly different views; we do it all the time, so the two images are slightly different and when overlaid use the same mechanism to make you think it’s 3D.
I used to be able to do them at will, and even overlap images an additional time to get a crazy second level of shape.
But now I can’t, thanks to the american health insurance industry. yay!
