Okay, took a while but I finally got it to “snap” into view by turning my head slightly back and forth. The blue started to appear as if it was moving on its own and I suddenly saw it pop forward out of the red background. Cool.
1 Like
It really pops when I see it. Then I took my glasses off, and it was barely anything.
I have some astigmatism and lots of nearsightedness, if that helps.
4 Likes
There’s another cool effect that utilizes the speed at which your brain can process information. In 1990 The Rolling Stones did a 3D television special. It wasn’t actually stereoscopic 3D but it achieved the effect by having the camera moving horizontally constantly and that combined with free glasses that essentially were half sunglasses… the dimmer eye processes the same image a frame slower. You can test the effect by watching the video with sunglasses covering one eye. (If you do the wrong eye it will appear inside out)
After I figured out how this effect works I noticed you can see lots of TV and movie footage in 3D as long as the camera is moving horizontally - like a camera pointed out a train window or looking sideways from a theme park dark ride.
5 Likes
No, it’s good. However! In my experiments with autostereopsis I have found three things:
-
On screens, the depth of the effect depends on a particular shade of red and blue along with a true black; some screens (computer, phone, TV) are better at displaying those colors than others.
-
Not everyone sees those colors in exactly the same way, so that’s a second variable. This one really pops for me, on my phone, but if it doesn’t pop for you, it could be your screen, your color perception, or both.
-
You can make printed images that do this, with a higher quality photo printer that has an appropriately wide color gamut, and the correct ICC profile (color matching between screen and paper) for the paper you’re using. High gloss paper works best. But it works for a smaller set of people than the one that can readily see the effect on a screen.
5 Likes
I found the live version much improved - also it seemed having a gap between the red and blue helped enhance the effect.
5 Likes
I remember discovering this effect when I first played Pac Man in an arcade. I couldn’t figure out why the blue lines seemed further away than the white dots.
It seems like it might be at least partially an artifact from the brain correcting for chromatic aberration in the cornea, in the same way that newer cameras correct for lense aberration.
3 Likes
This effect was used in the special Doctor Who / Eastenders crossover episode “Dimensions in Time”, broadcast as part of a BBC telethon in the nineties. It didn’t really matter whether you bought the official glasses for charity, or held sunglasses in front of one eye, as the episode itself would make you want to gouge both your eyes out. I imagine it’s available on Youtube.
6 Likes
That’s it!! Neat!!
1 Like
Same here, but I suspect the main problem was that glasses or not, it seems to get less prominent when I’m closer to the screen. And with my glasses off, at further than a few inches, everything’s a blur. But with my glasses, getting a few feet away from my monitor really made it pop.
1 Like
We learned about this in our human factors class; in particular to warn against using blue with other colors against a dark background as it can cause the blue to have a “floating” appearance (due to the exact wavelength-receptor type effect bla bla bla tehcnobabble here I forget reasons mentioned in the article).
I think about it a lot and for me it’s so pronounced that I can’t convince myself it’s not a mechanical property of the way that blue pixels are rendered on an LED – which obviously it’s not.
3 Likes
Same here. I have experienced the effect though (and very strongly) when red characters are used in some film end credits.
2 Likes
I don’t so much get it here, so it might be an age thing - because I remember being amazed as a kid by the weird stereo effect I would get by looking at the cover of the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set - the first edition. The red title would hover over the blue background, giving a very strong 3D effect. I don’t see it so much any more, though.
Okay weird. The upper left quadrant is flat for me. The lower right quadrant has the blue waaay in the distance behind the red. I wonder why.
Count me as another person who sees the red receding into the image. The effect strikes me pretty immediately, and it somewhat agitates me to see it.
My wife, meanwhile, sees it as flat.
I first noticed it on the cover of this book way back in the day:
But this was when the book was new and the red and blue really popped. I noticed the effect there, but not really on any of the images here. Nor the image of the book cover. It must have something to do with the LCD monitor I’m viewing this on.
2 Likes
Oof. Maybe you mean the story but I can imagine this effect would get nauseating after a very short time. Constant movement like that… a couple minutes of music video maybe ok, but a whole episode. I dunno. Ha
Sooooo, what’s it mean if it just looks 2-D? I opened as a desktop site on my mobile, went fullscreen. Even with colors reversed it just looks 2-D to me. 
1 Like
This is a well known technique that artists use when painting. In order to show distance/depth on a flat surface, certain perspective tricks have been figured out. The obvious would be things like converging lines, and objects further away appearing behind objects closer up. But also, the further away something is, the higher on the canvas it will be and it will have less details as well as being of a cooler tone. Meaning blues and greens more than reds.
I seem to remember having a comic book with special glasses that made use of this effect. (Not anaglyph mind you.) If I can dig it up I’ll post a link.
2 Likes
I would assume that at least as far as landscapes go, cooler = farther is depicting Rayleigh scattering
1 Like
