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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

I love this effect. I had a book of Magic Eye pictures as a kid, which was a similar effect.

I'm not sure how practical the "crossing your eyes to get 3D" thing actually is, it makes my eyes water after a minute or so, but it's still sort of cool to see my cheapy monitor doing 3D without any special glasses.

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I had the same book - the one with the black border? :) There was a dolphin or something, right? So long ago, can barely remember...

The water eye thing only happens to me if I cross my eyes and focus before the picture and not behind the picture. The latter takes some time to let the eyes relax, but its much more natural.

If you stitch the photos together seamlessly, you can display them on a VR headset in a really natural way. I take stereo images in landscape mode, stitch them together top/bottom, and then enjoy them on my Quest 2 using the Pigasus media player.

If you use a 180° fisheye lens, you can immerse yourself in the scene. just make sure to keep the camera perfectly level, or you'll end up making yourself sick if you try to view the images unadjusted.

I only learned somewhat recently that a lot of (or all?) Magic Eyes are meant to be parallel viewed instead of cross eyed. The difference was pretty impressive the first time I saw one correctly.

I seem to recall that Magic Eye pictures had you decross your eyes, so you were looking past the page. It was a bit harder to do.

"Wow, a sailboat!"

eh, you get used to it. I've watched whole movies like this

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