Originally published at: These are the best optical illusions of 2021 | Boing Boing
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I was shocked at how different the room was arranged at the end compared to how it started. I guessed the spiral was there to help draw the eye and distract from the changes, so didn’t focus on that, but still missed the changes. I could tell things had changed but couldn’t say what. I wonder if it is easier or harder to pick up on if the video is viewed in a larger format.
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Not explained is how the “phantom queen” moves without anyone placing their fingers on it. Magnets?
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I found the exercise ball to be sufficiently unusual as to draw the eye, but the changes to the bookshelf eluded me entirely.
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I noticed the ceiling panels changing, but of course that distracted me from the disappearing rug.
That rug really tied the room together.
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that phantom queen illusion only works because the video is 2D. if you were viewing it In real life with 3D vision or could just move your head around a bit, the illusion is broken. Same thing with those sidewalk illusion paintings or those glowing “hologram” lamps. They all look awesome in a 2d photo online but seeing them in 3D in real life and they fall apart.
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same for me and the curtains. i think it partly works because you’re primed to be scanning for something out of place, not looking for changes per se.
i could notice something changing but - other than the curtain - couldn’t figure what. it was pretty darn surprising
the rings illusion didn’t “work” at all for me tho. they all looked like 2d rings squishing and expanding to me - where i guess i was supposed to see rotation…
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I naturally immediately noticed the bottle of champers disappearing from the table. 
These are just tricks, not optical illusions AFAIC. Optical illusions (or optical delusions, if you’re Slip Mahoney), to me, anyway, are things like, ‘Are these lines of different lengths?’ ‘Is this a vase, or two faces?’ (I’d always been able to simultaneously see both, prob’ly b/c the astigmatism or whatever it is that prevents the magic eye stuff working for me) ‘This ball seems to roll uphill!’ etc, as opposed to CG fade-outs and slow color changes, camouflage boxes & mirrors…
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The first illusion depends heavily on the chessboard’s repeating pattern, and an unchanging viewpoint.
The second illusion is striking. I noticed the exercise ball had moved, but not any of the other changes.
The third is one I don’t get at all. The separate rings turn in 360 degrees for me, but so do the overlapping ones. It would seem my brain does not take stock of physical laws. Or maybe my brain considers that they’re two-dimensional figments anyway. The broken circle does not move any differently from the others. It could be that one ring is further away - or that, not being actual rings, there’s no problem with them passing through one another. It would be interesting to see if this is a “civilized” illusion, like the distorted room.
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I find that once it’s clear that these are not true rings but animated shapes, the analytical part of the brain gets a vote on what’s being seen. When the rings flatten down to just a line, there seems to be a brief “skip” in the realism that makes it difficult to determine what has happened. In fact, they could just be circles that flatten to ellipses and then a vertical line before spreading out back into circles.
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The rings illusion failed for me in the opposite direction - they all looked like they were rotating 360 to me. I’ve worked enough with computer graphics and played enough video games that I guess I’m not one to assume forms can’t just pass through each other!
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