
Make a Pseudoscope (2005) - mattbierner
https://pseudoscope.blogspot.com
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dandare
I was always wondering, why don't we have periscope windows?

What I imagine is a "light intake" on a roof, from which the light is
concentrated into a straight long NARROW tube that takes it to an underground
flat where the light is dispersed into a fake window.

Is such design not possible mathematically or just very expensive?

Maybe it could use Fresnel lenses to save on cost and weight. That way we
would not get a clear picture of the outside world but at least lot of natural
daylight.

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jw1224
I live in a 3-storey apartment building, and one of my neighbours downstairs
actually has this. It's actually a bit of a sneaky marketing "hack" by the
architects.

When the building was being designed a couple of years ago, they put a light
tunnel in place running down the vertical length of one side of the building.
This took light from the penthouse's roof and channeled it down to the ground
floor.

By doing this, the architects could turn a 2-bedroom apartment into a
3-bedroom one. By law (at least in the UK), you cannot market a room as a
bedroom unless it has natural light coming in. As my neighbour's apartment was
surrounded on two sides by adjoining walls, this meant a room mid-way through
the length of the building (and otherwise devoid of natural light) could be
considered a bedroom, and marketed as such.

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Spare_account
> It's actually a bit of a sneaky marketing "hack" by the architects.

> By doing this, the architects could turn a 2-bedroom apartment into a
> 3-bedroom one. By law (at least in the UK), you cannot market a room as a
> bedroom unless it has natural light coming in.

This doesn't sound right to me, so I checked and the best I can come up with
is this, from the building regulations:

[https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects...](https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects/5/basements/2)

There is reference to fire escape/egress and to ventilation but nothing about
natural light. I don't think there is any requirement to have natural light
for a room to be defined as a bedroom.

The subject of what a bedroom actually is appears to be somewhat murky. The
Building Regulations use terms like "habitable space" for most rooms within a
house which I assume allows for the fact that one persons front
room/lounge/living room might be another persons ground floor bedroom/granny
annex/lodger's bedsit. There are some specific cases such as kitchens and
bathrooms that don't tend to be as ambiguous, but I don't think there is a
regulation that backs up your statement "By law (at least in the UK), you
cannot market a room as a bedroom unless it has natural light coming in."

[http://www.rics.org/uk/knowledge/glossary/what-is-a-
bedroom/](http://www.rics.org/uk/knowledge/glossary/what-is-a-bedroom/)

~~~
hrktb
I don't know for the UK, but there is a similar limitation in Japan. An
habitation room must have a window, which meant our house was a 2 bedroom + 1
utility room, and not 3 bedrooms.

I don't have the source of the requirement, just that it was specified in the
contract, and we got an explanation as to why the third room was not deemed
fit for habitation.

~~~
blincoln
My understanding is that it's because of what the GP cited - there needs to be
an alternate way to escape the room in the event of a fire/flood/etc.

A friend of a friend drowned because they were asleep in a "bedroom" which was
a room in a lower level without a window.

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baddox
I achieved a presumably similar effect several years ago by viewing my 3D TV
(remember those?) with the 3D glasses on upside down. It is definitely very
strange having “near” and “far” effectively reversed, yet with all the other
depth cues in place.

~~~
taneq
A more comfortable way to achieve this is just set the 3D mode to the wrong
setting (eg. R|L side-by-side instead of L|R, or under/over instead of
over/under). Agreed that it's a really weird feeling, almost like having
something brushing your face.

(Also, it makes me sad that 3D is no longer a feature of new TVs. I guess I'm
just going to have to hold onto the one we've got - _I_ like watching 3D
movies even if no-one else in the house does!)

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mattbierner
> A pseudoscope is an optical instrument made with two prisms. As seen in the
> drawing, the mirrors reverse the image in each eye causing some items viewed
> through it to look quite unusual: convex objects become concave, things
> pointing towards you may look like they are pointing away and vice versa.

— [https://pseudoscope.blogspot.com/2005/06/pseudoscope-is-
opti...](https://pseudoscope.blogspot.com/2005/06/pseudoscope-is-optical-
instrument-made.html)

~~~
mannykannot
If I am not mistaken, this homemade pseudoscope works on a slightly different
principle - it switches the perspective from which each eye sees the object,
without any left-right reversal. The two-prism device appears to preserve the
perspective of each eye but does a left-right reversal of the images on each
retina (I confirmed the non- left-right reversal in the mirror case with a
pair of hand-held mirrors.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscope#/media/File:Pseudo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscope#/media/File:Pseudoscope_prism.png)

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scentoni
What's the name of an optical device like this that merely magnifies the
stereo separation without crossing the images? I see examples of photographs
taken this way but not real-time viewing instruments
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereo_photography_techniques#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereo_photography_techniques#Longer_base_line_for_distant_objects_–_"Hyper_Stereo")

~~~
jloughry
Look at old battleship rangefinders. Some of them had 8 or 9 metre baselines.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence_rangefinder#Stereo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence_rangefinder#Stereoscopic_rangefinders)

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Tepix
Has someone built a virtual pseudoscope for virtual reality goggles such as
Oculus Go?

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TuringTest
This illusion should be relatively easy to implement as a scene in VR.

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app4soft
Title should be:

    
    
      Make a Pseudoscope (2005)

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vermilingua
I mean, does knowing it was written in 2005 change how you read it? Titles
only really need years if the context is important, and AFAIK the physics of
prisms haven't changed all that much in 13 years.

~~~
tomhoward
It also helps readers to know if they've read the article before.

