Now that you've figured it out, behold: Stereograms!
The above satellite images from NASA allow you to SEE the topography in 3D.
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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Omg I've never been able to do a magic eye before, but I think there stereograms just unlocked it for me! I Feel like I get it now, thanks!
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.
Off to find my house!
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Yes. They require stereoscopic vision. When I was doing research on 3D displays about 10% of subjects had to be rejected because they were stereo blind. They had no idea they were that way.
One woman said that explains why she had the nickname clunk in high school. She had a habit of rearending cars.
Lmao clunk is brutal
I'm one of the stereo blind. I was kind of glad when I found out from the eye doctor. It explained why I could rarely catch a baseball without getting hit.
So depending on why you might be able to train it. If you don't have a lazy eye and have good vision you may want to look into it.
If your brain is just not fusing two good images there is a good chance you can train it to do so. Having done experiments in this field I can tell you it makes a measurable difference in performance.
A good read on the subject is below. The part where she first sees a tree in 3D is a good example of what you are missing.
Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions by Susan R Barry
Thanks, I'll check it out.
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.
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.
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
Nope. Never figured it out
As someone with a lazy eye I can control, stereograms are ludicrously easy for me to see.
Yes.
The instructions say don't cross your eyes but that's horseshit and probably why so many people fail to see them.
My method is to cross my eyes, then uncross them slowly until the 3d effect appears, then hold on that position.
But then you see them inverted.
3d cross eyed pictures and magic eye work in similar but different ways
Yup you want to focus farther than the picture. Crossing your eyes makes you focus closer.
Someone made a modified version of Quake back in the day, that rendered to stereoscopic 3D in a white noise pattern.
It was such a mindfuck to play!
You get 3D depth but no colors or shades or contrast. It's just shapes moving. So doors that were flush with the wall were impossible to see, but enemies in dark rooms were fully visible because there is no light or dark.
I like to imagine I got to experience what a bat sees with echolocation.
That sounds cool af! I wonder if something like that still exists.
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.
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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 can see the 3D, but struggle to put together what they are sometimes because I don't have colors to put the image together.
one of us
Yes, but only if I take off my glasses.
Thought this might do it for me, but still no.
Took a few minutes when it was introduced to me, but I can see them
I can view the convergent (cross-eyed) ones no problem. I managed once to focus on the divergent ones with like 30 minutes of practice, but I had trouble focusing normally afterwards for like an hour so I haven't tried since.
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I can somewhat move my eyes independently. I credit this skill to us having had magic eyes books as a kid and I just learned to control eye muscles willingly.
Absolutely loved them as a kid! Had a quite a few books.
You can do them two different ways. The normal way with the object popping out towards you and an inverted way with crossing your eyes that inverts the shape.
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My parents were of the opinion they were an elaborate hoax until they had me draw what I saw in one of them.
This was in a newspaper 30 or so years ago maybe. The image was accompanied by a depth-map image of what should be visible, but they covered that up. Then they asked if I'd looked at the newspaper before them because, even with my terrible art skills, it was clearly what was in the depth-map version.
I think they believed me in the end though.
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I see them inverted. I'm left handed, I figure that has something to do with it
It sounds like you might be looking at the left image with your right eye and the right image with your left eye. That's what happens when you cross your eyes instead of looking past the image.
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.
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.
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