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- 012
-
-
- by Freak of NFA
-
- What a git! FINALLY I managed to see one of those bloody
- "Majic Eye" bollocks stereo image thingies, I wasted 15
- minutes - FIFTEEN BLOODY MINUTES - of my life staring at
- what looked like a piece of wallpaper in Amiga Format and
- eventually I saw it! It was a load of fishies in a fish
- tank with seaweed and everything! Wow! Amazing! NOT!
-
- What a bloody disappointment! For those of you who can't
- for the life of you see anything in the puke-inducing ink
- patterns, all you see is something like this:
- _________________
- | | Where the fish and the seaweed
- | )\ : <>< | appear to be higher than the
- || )< -). || background, look at the holo-
- |\ )/ |(| gram on any credit card for a
- |(+||\ /||))| similar effect.
- ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
- There are a couple of problems with this, firstly the random
- dots that make up the pretty pattern are mapped over
- everything, and so it's extremely difficult to see where the
- shape ends and the background begins. Secondly, if you
- don't know what you're looking for you haven't a hope in
- HELL of finding it easily, it just isn't that obvious!
-
- H O W T O D O T H E M
-
- When I finally saw the fishies (...) I realised that there
- are actually about three easily recognisable stages you need
- to go through before you get to the final image, unless you
- are one of these smug shits (like my brother) who can look
- at one and say - in about 0.004 of a second flat - "Oh wow,
- it's a Dragon!!". Basically:
-
- The 2 Layers...
-
- First you've got to seperate the two layers, this is the bit
- where you stare past the image until you perceive that the
- surface of the picture has actally receeded into the page,
- much like the credit-card hologram. This is actually the
- easiest to do, for me I look at an object about 3-4 feet
- away and place the picture about a foot in front of me. It
- may be different for everybody, I don't know.
-
- The Shapes...
-
- Once you have the background depth sorted out you've got to
- see where the main shapes are. The best way I've found to
- do this is, while you have the image about a foot away from
- you and can perceive the depth of the image, move it back
- and forth a couple of inches, towards and away from your
- eyes. Eventually (I hope) certain areas of the image will
- appear to "lunge" out at you, or come closer to you faster
- than the background. These are the "raised" images and they
- appear closer to the surface of the page.
-
- Focussing...
-
- This is the most difficult part, because when you try to
- focus on something within the image you more often than not
- focus directly on the surface of the page and have to start
- all over again, and bearing in mund you haven't the foggiest
- idea what you're looking for this can be extremely bloody
- frustrating! Eventually though, you'll perceive the harder
- edges of the shapes and - assuming the actual pattern isn't
- too distracting - you may be able to see what's hidden in
- there.
-
- SO! Now that you've finally seen what all the bloody fuss
- is about, were you impressed? Well actually, no I wasn't,
- in fact it's a load of CACK! If you can't do them at all
- then don't worry about it, you ain't missing nothing, in
- fact you might want to try CROYES which stands for "Cross-
- Eyed Stereograms" instead.
-
- CROYES are made up of two slightly different images, which
- you hold side-by-side. Cross your eyes so that the two
- images split into four, then relax towards normal focus
- until the inner two images map onto the same one, then focus
- on this image. It's a damned sight easier than this random
- dot bollox because:
-
- (1) You can tell what you're looking at!
-
- (2) ANYBODY can cross their eyes, otherwise
- you wouldn't be able to focus!
-
- (3) They can have infinitely more detail than
- random-dot images because there's no
- encoding of the data!
-
- If you'd like to see some examples of CROYES then I've
- included some in the menu for you to look at, they are black
- and white and taken from one of the PD-Pak disks from NFA-PD
- where they are available (6 in all) in AGA colour.
-
- Don't worry if you can't see the Random Dot Stereograms, you
- wern't missing much!
-
- Freak of NFA
-