I agree with the general sentiment, though I believe that the value of these images from the perspective of scientific appreciation outweighs traditional Magic Eye images. I remember, ten years later on, how my professor for the geology intro course let us see images taken over Germany by British intelligence, and you could literally see how they used the stereography to find missiles, because you’d be looking at a bunch of flat terrain and then bam, there’s a weird thing poking up out of the ground near that farmhouse. Then, she showed us some of these, and showed us how you could compare the topography in these to those on the topo maps. From a “wow” factor, not everything is going to be as flashy as a Royal Institution Christmas lecture, but this is what science looks like.

ETA: Wait, what do you mean “out-of-focus”?

Thanks for the additional examples!

Is the last one (lion statue & building) a reprojection? I didn’t see depth (or parallax) in the background, just between the lion and the building.

Here are some fun ones of cerebral anatomy from neuroimaging.org:

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b1d6a9a0-829c-4b27-a450-277e2e40672f.png">

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/999a5329-9599-4582-9300-94c0c71e60e9.png">

Ah, thanks for the edit. I still think that these have greater value from a scientific perspective, but I do also have a collection of many stereo images that I could post here for you! They’re MUCH older, though:

<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/f9acf67e-7f5f-43fe-b03a-669ab9bd7673.jpeg">

<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/67281cc9-ecb9-4884-a2fb-3e354f876af6.jpeg">

<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/a27b9e92-2336-459e-8b5f-35be848f3dfe.jpeg">

<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/b1bada45-99d6-4105-aab9-3147162c0e1d.jpeg">

Sorry for the poor quality here! It’s difficult to take nice scans of these since they’re curved with age. OH, also, these are wall-eyed, not cross-eyed.

The third from the end to the beginning is quite spectacular showing the effect. I’d put that one first, honestly.

If you want wall-eyed viewing, you can just download the image and mirror flip swap 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).

I can still view these, but it’s much much harder for me.

I don’t know why parallel isn’t the default.

I grew up with the Magic Eye books and have never been able to do cross-view as a result.

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.

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.

Ooh, nice depth!

I remember my HP IPAQ, it was my first mobile computing device. That thing was so much fun.

That is really cool and the PDA screen is such a cool effect!

It is a good one. Although my eyes kept trying to focus on the keyboad and failing

Subbed! Thanks!

Have you ever had your vision checked?

You dumb bastard, it’s not a schooner it’s a sailboat.

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!

Hmm, you are correct with the identifications, but the order I see in voyager is the one I’ve posted:

<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/cd7b6df4-6731-40e3-9b8a-d9f8a859a8fc.jpeg">

The only ones where I think we differ are 2 & 3. I’m pretty sure that the top one in my screenshot is wheeler ridge.

These are cross-view, your probably using the focus at infinity trick instead.

I tried so long I tried every method, never worked for me. Then eventually I found an image that made it work for me

i.redd.it/25c330mmohu51.jpg

(Sorry for the Reddit link). How I do it: put your phone screen right before your nose and unfocus your eyes. Then, don’t move your eyes, don’t move your focus, but slowly move the phone away from your face. At about 10-20cm distance, you should be able to see a squirrel with a nut in its hands.

After that it became very easy to do other pictures simply by knowing what to expect (an actual 3d image).

That being said the one above is really hard.

I can only do parallel-view, not crosseyed, those look so surreal that way (inverted height/depth basically)

Do you happen to have a dominant eye? If you primarily use one eye over the other I dont believe these work. For me, I have a scar in the middle of one eye that prevents most straight ahead vision, so its only used to add peripheral information.

If you have astigmatism or greatly different lens prescriptions per eye, it may be very hard for it to work.

If you do have astigmatism, you can kind of ‘squeeze’ or scrunch your eyelids down to compensate as you cross your eyes, and it may work better without glasses and closer up

Some people it just never works with

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.

For a lot of people cross eyed views are easier, they would probably give similar complaints for a wall eyed view. It depends a lot on how your eye muscles behave

Mountains are deep, land is puffy. Weirded out of that was ever the purpose.

Amazing! Thanks!

These are rad. Excellent post.

These ones are… different. When I use these ones the mountain ridges appear to dip inwards? Away from the screen. This was not the case for the ones in the main post

EDIT: I figured out the reason: i’m still going cross-eyed to view them. In the cross-eyed ones, you are taking the left image in the right eye and the right image in the left eye, but in the wall-eyed one you are supposed to take them in reverse. So if you look at the wall-eyed one cross-eyed, the depths are going to all be reversed for you.

EDIT 2: to get the wall-eyed ones to work correctly, I had get a piece of mail and physically seperate my eyes from one another with it. The sensation of going wall-eyed was exactly the same as crossing my eyes, but the results were now correct.

Thank you, they look amazing

Thanks. These are cross-eyed, not the originals. The originals viewed with crossed eyes all made holes out of the mountains.

Thank you so much! This is so much easier for me.

I wasn’t going to complain or anything, but this post made me realize that I’m actually incapable of viewing cross-eyed. It actually hurt my eye sockets to try.

Haha sick, so cool. This is so much cooler than the old school stereograms with like a silhouet hiding in an image. How did you make these?

Idk why I can’t do the cross-eyed, still wanna see if I can get that working as well

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.

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.

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.

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!

I have one of these stereoscopes! It came with a bunch of nature scenes, but a few slides had 1800s 3D porn too!

I’m glad it helped!

This is actually the opposite method you’re supposed to use. If you cross your eyes to see a Magic Eye photo, the image will be inverted/inside out.

To view a Magic Eye, you’re supposed to look through the image. Personally I was never able to pull it off. These cross-eyed images are a lot easier.

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.