
Akiyoshi's Illusion Pages - mabynogy
http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html
======
moron4hire
My senior undergraduate research thesis was based on the illusions Dr. Kitaoka
had constructed. I tested people's ability to perform tasks that required them
to understand heightmap data given one of three randomly selected renderers: a
top-down, completely flat map with no height rendering as a control; a similar
rendering but with Akiyoshi's "A Bulge" illusion generated on the fly for each
"hill"; and an isometric rendering where the hills were rendered in 2.5D. I
was able to show that the illusion method was about 95% as effective at
conveying heightmap data as the isometric map, while being no more
computationally complex than the flat map. At the time (2005), it was one of
the first direct uses of optical illusion in computer graphics. It was also
one of the first papers to discuss the importance of changing graphics
techniques to extend battery life on mobile devices.

EDIT: forgot I had put up all my stuff into a Github repo a few years ago:
[https://github.com/capnmidnight/optical-illusions-in-
cg/blob...](https://github.com/capnmidnight/optical-illusions-in-
cg/blob/master/final_draft.pdf)

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mrpopo
For context, he got a little boost recently from his "strawberry cake"
illusion tweet :
[https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/83674359846907084...](https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/836743598469070849)

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pcurve
Something so refreshing about this unapologetically 1996 styled web site and
vast amount of incredible content. This is a great find.

~~~
mwfj
I miss the 1996-1997 type web sites. Ads and money has changed the web so
much.

I recently had the idea to start a like 1994-style Yahoo-style web site that
only links to sites which fulfill these conditions:

a) they have a lot of quality content

b) they only have minimal or no ads (absolutely no signups, freemium sites,
14-day trials etc).

c) no obnoxious self-advertising of a company's own brand (e.g. "Will It
Blend? | Presented by Blendtec").

d) (this one is hard to quantify, but it's a kind of "I know it when I see it"
thing) they were made with love and a desire to spread thoughts and
creations.. rather than a desire for making money.

Obviously this directory site would not be a vehicle for making money. I also
don't want this to be a hipster coolness thing. It's not the retro-ugly
layouts I'm after, it's the content.

Stupid? Does it already exist?

The site that I came across that triggered this thought was
[http://www.americanradiohistory.com/](http://www.americanradiohistory.com/) .

~~~
sosuke
What you're talking about making is how Yahoo! started out. As a directory of
the web. Curated by humans. If you start one please share a link.

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pwinnski
Having seen the rotating snakes illusion before, I decided to stare at it,
playing with the focus of my eyes until the illusion of motion stopped.

Once it did, I found that many of the other illusions also didn't work. Also,
I have a headache, and everything not on my screen seems slightly unfocused.

Clearly I tried a bit too hard!

~~~
logicallee
Frustrated by trompe oeils, defiant HN nerd uses concentration and focus
tricks to hack his biological GPU to dump raw eye input. Optical illusions
disappear. But to his horror, the rest of the world actually naturally blurry.
Moral of the story: don't hack on production.

~~~
mrkgnao
Frustrated by trompe l'oeils, a defiant Hackernews uses concentration and
focus tricks to hack his biological GPU to dump raw eye input while waiting
for his Idris proof of the commutativity of addition to finish compiling.
Optical illusions disappear. But to his horror, the rest of the world is
actually naturally blurry. Another Hackernews shows up to satirise said
idiot's "experience", as massing clouds of Strikeforces of all sorts loom
darkly in the distance, smelling neural buffer overflows.

(Honestly, though, that website is amazing. The "idiot" was purely for
effect.)

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codezero
This is a little off topic but seems as good a place as any to ask:

Is anyone working on computer vision that is "tricked" by illusions? I'm
curious because it seems like a good way to test how accurately computer
vision maps to human vision (then again, I'm not even sure that's a goal!)

~~~
Baeocystin
Sort of. Computer vision is susceptible to illusions, although as you can see
in the link, not the same type that we are.

[https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/195789-bad-news-
future-c...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/195789-bad-news-future-
computers-are-easily-tricked-by-optical-illusions-too)

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tobr
Many of these are fantastic, I could swear some of them used actual animation.
For example
[http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/kagero3e.html](http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/kagero3e.html)

What causes the appearance of movement?

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peteretep
I suspect it's your brain trying to reconcile misleading shadow/highlight
information.

~~~
kpil
I thought it was misrepresentating the shadows and highlights as the
"negative" afterglow you get after something has moved on the retina.

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cwilkes
I can't get the rotating rays one to work. Just stays stationary. All others
are fine.

~~~
cyberferret
Similar here. Got it to work somewhat by staring at a fixed point on the image
and using my mouse to scroll the page up and down slightly.

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wmboy
Aghh, this is what it feels like to have a migraine with aura, except that
with a migraine your vision looks like this no matter what you're looking at.

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speps
Nice paper from 2008 here exploring how to make specific patterns :
[http://graphics.csie.ncku.edu.tw/SAI/](http://graphics.csie.ncku.edu.tw/SAI/)

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coldcode
After looking this page everything seems to be moving.

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jpfed
Am I the only person who is made nauseous by the rotating snakes illusion? I
had to hit the back button before the page was done loading.

~~~
rangibaby
> Should you feel dizzy, you had better leave this page immediately

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martyvis
"A bulge" is brilliant! Pinch-zooming on a phone and lining up the square
lines against the screen edge is mind blowing.

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glandium
Some of them don't move at all for me... except while scrolling the page.

