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.

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.

Now that you've figured it out, behold: Stereograms!

The above satellite images from NASA allow you to SEE the topography in 3D.

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.

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.

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 love them! Generally find that once you get one it's a lot easier. I find that if I've not looked at one for a while, and 8k kit getting it, and I go back to the first one I got (some boxing kangaroos) and normally it just clicks again.

My partner can't see them, and is convinced it's just a dumb hoax that people on the Internet play pretending they can see them.

Nope! But I've made them. I needed to go find someone with more normal eyes to test my creations for me, though.

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.

This is a great random question. Me likey

Wow, I must be the only person on Lemmy that cannot

Yes.

I finally realized how to reliably do it in my early 20s (a while ago now) but still can to this day. Just have to start with it at my face haha.

Yes. I can change my vision's focal point and focus distance at will, so it's usually easy even though my eyesight is getting fucky with age.

I see them inverted. I'm left handed, I figure that has something to do with it

Yeah, but I have to stick my face right up close and slowly move it away to do so.

Phone/tablet screens work best for it.

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.

Nope. Never figured it out

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

Yeah I just relax my eyes and then focus the book without moving my line of sight

Never, ever been able to see them but then I'm neurodiverse

I couldn't because really bad astigmatism, but after ICL surgery I could. Magic Eye is really cool, binged the greatest hits after I found out I could see them.

Being legally blind in one eye precludes me from using those

I used to, but its been years since I've tried, and I've had to get stronger glasses a couple of time since then.

I have tried to see them so many times but have never even gotten an inkling.

Are those still being made? I haven't seen one in ages. But yeah I could see em.

It's harder than it was before I needed bifocals, but yeah.

Once you learn the trick of it, it gets easier to do.

I wanna say I was late teens/early twenties when they first started showing up in my area, and I stood in the store I first saw one for like a half hour trying to see the image. My vision was kinda bad across the board, even then. But I got the first one, which was a boat, and then flipped through the rest of the selection they had, maybe five or six different ones?

But any time I got new glasses, it would take a few minutes to adjust when I'd run across one again. Same if I needed new ones.

They really are fun

Im in my 30s and learned a few years ago, my brother in law showed me how. Was super cool, I had always thought it was people trolling

I can, but it is sometimes tricky. Usually I can make the image go into 3D mode without too much trouble, but I sometimes can't figure out what I'm supposed to be seeing. Like, I can tell that things are at different depths but I have a hard time resolving it into a complete cohesive image. I think it is mostly due to the weird random pattern that makes up the image and the difficulty in finding how the edges work together. It could just be shitty stereograms, though, since most of them work fine.

Yes, you have to imagine you are looking into a mirror at yourself and focus your eyes on that place; look past the image.

Yep. There was one on the Sunday comics page every week when I was a kid, and I learned how to do it then. I never understood the people who can't do it, or thought it was fake.

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.

Yes, but only if I take off my glasses.

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.

Inconsistently. Haven't tried for yonks. Back when they were brand new I got maybe 50%.