As someone with a lazy eye I can control, stereograms are ludicrously easy for me to see.
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
113 points (99.1% liked)
No Stupid Questions
42250 readers
630 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
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.
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
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.
I can
My tip is to try to look past the picture, like you're focusing on something 10ft behind the wall. Then squint your eyes.
Inconsistently. Haven't tried for yonks. Back when they were brand new I got maybe 50%.
How many yonks has in been?
Late 80s early 90s?? Whenever Good Weekend did a weekly.
I had a friend who couldn't see them and the following explanation is how I got her to be able to:
-
Stand two arm lengths from the picture, holding you arm out in front of you with one finger up, so that your finger is halfway between you and the picture and lined up with near the bottom of it (or you could use any distance and put your finger halfway there).
-
Both the picture and your finger should now be in your field of view. Focus on the tip of your finger. Maintain your eyes in that focus state and shift your attention from your finger to the picture, remembering not to let your eyes change their focus.
-
Once you have your eyes stuck into that focus length you should be able to move them around and view all parts of the picture seeing the 3D effect. But if you still have problems you can move your finger to keep it in front of your eyes and in focus while you move your eyes, but you'll quickly learn how to keep them in the correct state with a little practice.
This also works if you focus on twice the distance of the picture, but most people find the half-distance focus easier.
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?
one of us
Nope. Never figured it out
Now that you've figured it out, behold: Stereograms!
The above satellite images from NASA allow you to SEE the topography in 3D.
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!
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.
Took a few minutes when it was introduced to me, but I can see them
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.
Yes, but only if I take off my glasses.
Thought this might do it for me, but still no.
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.
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!
Yup.
I'm pretty sure the scene from Mallrats was based on me. I stood and stared at those at the mall for days and could never see them. Finally one day - 20ish years later it finally clicked and now I can see them.
view more: next ›