By Vurdlak on February 16, 2009, with 33 Comments
A simple one for today. User that goes under pseudonym “r4z2″ sent me the following image, along with his explanation: “Hi, been a secret lurker at you site for years now :) And when I accidentally created this image, I thought I’d submit it. The white lines are actually perfectly horizontal and vertical, even though they appear slanted.” Not much can be added to r4z2′s words, except that I rarely post simple illusions like this one, but believe it shows the effect at it’s best, and deserves a spot on Mighty Optical Illusions. Btw, I don’t remember – have we solved why these thing occur? Similar examples were already posted.
P.S. I have updated Nike SB “Optical Illusion” Blazers with the crucial missing picture.
(14 votes)
lol i dont get it btw 1st!
hey,
i´m a fan of every illusion!
the difficult ones are wonderful but the easier ones are perfect!
this is the best example for a perfect one!
easy but amazin!
thx for illusions like these!
I think the reason that these type of illusions confuse us is because the white lines are not continuous, but made up of overlapping segments, each of which is in fact sloping. There are, in fact, NO continuous white lines, vertical or horizontal.
not sure this one works that well…all i see is perfectly shaped squares, no slanted lines besides the pale blue ones
Nicee! I love simple illusions! Not to mention hard ones! haha cool though!
This is by far the best illusion of all time. Generations to come will look back on this with wonder. Up there with the pyramids.
cool idk really know what in the world to do but looks cool
Humans don’t actually see what they ‘see’. The rods at the back of the eyes collect pieces of the image and send them to the brian for interpretation. The brain, unless trained otherwise, tries to use the minimum ‘runtime’ to interpret what the eyes are sending.
If the image is primarily diagonals, the brain will force everything else to diagonal. The same with curves, relative size, etc.
This is stupid. its not an optical illusion. You can obviously tell the white lines are horizontal and vertical.
well its just nice lol makes me dizzy hahahaha 1!
joanne cyrus
I don’t know if it’s just me, but the white lines do not appear slanted at all.
It looks like a perfect grid system.
nice!
but i would be even more nice if we could have diagonal fading and apearing to see if they are really straight cause they really look slanted to me even if i try very hard :S
Wow. Amazing.
well i see it like this: when you stare at the zigzaggy lines (this works better on widgets) the sidy lines dissapear
if you stare at it for about 15 seconds sometimes it turns all white
gotta love the classics! and no i don’t think we have. what is the cause for this phenomena i wonder… it could be confusion between one eye and the other, cause if i look at this with only one eye, i don’t really have trouble determining that the lines are parallel to each other and not slanted but i can still vaguely see it.. also i looked the the example and i can see it with one and 2 eyes, but again the degree is lessened with only one eye. so that mat just be a factor. also first? :P
wierd
wo this is so cool i love it…!
Thats really weird. On a side note after staring at it for a while the white lines seemed to disappear.
an odd 2 for 1 accident
Yeah its a good illusion but only the horizontal lines are slanty for me.
nice one
Sumple but effective. i like it.
simple, but cool.
p.s.i really love this site,keep up the good work
cool
Interesting & simple – but also easy to overcome. Stare "through" the diagonal lines, and the boxes immediately square up :)
im a regular viewer of the site and really like the illusions. im no genius but it seems simple enough to explain. the illusion appears to be caused by the grid of horizontal and vertical lines causing breaks in the diagonal lines giving the appearance that they are slanted.the illusion seems to be more easily noticed around the edges where the diagonal lines have different lengths.
If you lean back the lines appear slanted yes, but up close, as most us sit at the computer, the illusion fades. Also, this does have to to do with the photreceptors and rods in the eyes. While I'm not sure of the cause in this particular case, as it's in b&w, many simialr illusions in color have to do with the color of the after images caused by the photoreceptors in our eyes. Still if I had to take a stab at the cause for this one, I'd say it's the brightness of the lighter areas contrasting with the grey.
hiya peeps
this illusion is boring. if you have seen 1 u have seen the other 1,000,000 aswell
you can do better ;) :)
signed narnia
My two cents: When lines intersect at angles far off the perpendicular, they create Moiré patterns. This effect causes the small angles to add “weight” to the lines as they retreat from the angle. In the case of the horizontals above, for example, the diagonal line seems to add some thickness on the left above the line, but on the right below the line. This causes the horizontal line to appear “crooked” close to the intersection. Follow the line to the next intersection, and the effect repeats itself. The same happens on the verticals, but in the opposite direction.
The lines are not straight. I just checked in my image editor (Gimp) . They are slightly slanted.
AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
dude how do u do it!!!!!?????
holy shitt if you look at it for 14-20 seconds it goes all white!
if you guys stared it and focused at the big white line and than move your head to the left,right you can see that line is moving NOTE:about kat comment it goes all white i dont get it it doesnt happened to me nut it’s okay…