Jason Mayoff, Zachary Burgeson and Eric Cole liked this video so much that all of them un-connectedly submitted it for me to publish on Mighty Optical Illusions homepage. I am really puzzled with this one. I browsed the web for explanation, and almost everywhere people said that the fluid this guy is purring is just an ordinary water. I wouldn’t bet my allowance on it.

Allrighty then, I’ll let you smart-asses figure this one for yourselves, since I really don’t have a clue. Can we solve it together? In the past, I believe we managed to solve every single puzzle on this website. I hope that the tradition won’t be stopped today. This is more of a magic trick than optical illusion, but when we solve it, maybe I’ll change my statement. For more illusionary videos, be sure to jump to our videos section. Now employ your gray brain cells, and start thinking!

Video Illusions,

(34 votes)

Hole in the grill

“Dear Mr. Illusion Man, I am in middle school and I love illusions and cool math things. I think your site is awesome and I have the widget. One day I looked out my window onto the porch and I thought there was a hole in the grill, but it was actually just really clear water reflecting the wooden pole thing. I put two different pictures on the email because I wasn’t sure which one was better. I hope you post it. Invisible illusions are one of my faves ;)”.

I am glad that you shared this with us Georgia, since it looks great (specially when you enlarge the photos). This is the first illusion after the widget update, and it should appear on your desktop in few minutes. Great opportunity to test the widget and comment it. The widget isn’t meant to replace the website, but to show you “illusion of the day” on your desktop. If you notice, by clicking on the image in your desktop widget, it will bring you directly to that particular illusion’s explanation and community comments. Also, this way you won’t miss all the related stuff I link through in my articles. Enjoy!

News Flash – If you are a long time visitor and interested to participate in our new beta project, as being a future guest blogger, and co-editor of this website, send me a brief email including reasons why you believe you would be suitable for this fun co-operation ;) You can find my email in the sidebar, under “contact”.

Hole in the Grill Optical Illusion

Outdoor Illusions, Transparent,

(21 votes)

What are widgets? I write this little info for those of you who know nothing about them, so you can benefit. They are little useful applications you can place on your PC or Mac desktop and have them show you our newest optical illusion every day. I write this because finally yahoo fixed our PC widget, and you can download it from here. It works now, so please comment your experience. Below you can see how the widgets look in action on PC, Mac and Google Homepage. Be sure to download our newest version:

PC Version (4.0): Download | Info
Mac Version (4.0): Download | Info
Google Homepage (4.0): Download | Info

News,

(8 votes)

User called Artem sent me this scanned photo a week ago. To be really honest I wasn’t very impressed with it at the first glance. Artem said: “This is the albie’s logo, a farm, but Albie himself is here. His head is the small shed, his arms are the path to the barn, and body, the hill.” I wasn’t planning to publish it, but somehow I never managed to see the hidden Albie man inside this picture. If it’s really there, it can be one of the best hidden game illusions, but if it isn’t or if Albie is too abstract, this can be pretty bad illusion. I need your help to spot him, like I needed with that hidden baby. I was intrigued by this since I always understood every illusion submission. What the hell happened to me? Good or bad, you tell me!

Spot The Object, Logo

(40 votes)

Joseph Johnson made a very nice discovery while browsing Google Earth. We can’t get rid of our little dragon – he follows us wherever we go, even in Google Earth :) This one is really awesome, maybe a coincidence, or some ancient civilization made a tribute to their dragon king. Who knows… Its gonna be a rough week. I’m planning to post many of the submissions that overcrowd my mailbox. Stay tuned…

This is what Joseph wrote: “I haven’t seen this anywhere else yet, maybe I’m the first to spot it. Sure looks like a dragon to me.” Few more dragon-reminders: Dragon Illusion no.2 and St. George vs Dragon

Google Earth,

(17 votes)

Looks like transparent stuff never gets old! From transparent desktops, see-through billboards, newspapers, mugs, invisible cloaks… all the way to transparent Palms, PSPs, magazines, clothes and “invisible bodies” – we had them all. Probably under influence of all these various illusions Pachanka TheGreat and Richard Howard decided to share two of their creations. I really like both of them, except the first one has little better effect (due to perfect contrast), the second one is also awesome but too dark in the background to work properly. I used this post more as a reminder for all of you about our first illusion articles. Check the blue links in this text and they will bring you to few of the most successful transparent illusion posts from recent months. Dozen more can be found in our transparent category. Enjoy!

Transparent,

(18 votes)

Jessica pointed me to a website of an artist called Phil Hansen from Washington. He creates art in an unusual way, like the two photos you see below. First one is a simple portrait of Daudi, a boy living in Uganda created using Star bucks coffee mugs. The second one is little more complex. The author stated that 2×4′s were lined up to look like framework of a house, and used a blow torch to burn in the image of a fire fighter. If you walk around this piece, the picture is only visible from one point of view, like the Cardiff Bay Barrage installation. This is what Jessica originally wrote:

“Hi! I love the site, keep up the good work! I was looking at an internet site that I love and they referred me to website of artist Phil Hansen. It’s worth looking at the pictures he has on display, it’s some very cool stuff. The link I give specifically is an optical illusion, but some of the others work too, I think, since they are photos made up of other things. Check it out, you’ll see what I mean!”

Art Installation,

(20 votes)

Last night I was browsing the web for some new illusions. Here and then I feel obligated to post few of my own, not only user submissions. There are still over hundred emails in my gmail box to be approved, so don’t worry if your’s hasn’t been posted yet. They come in rate where it gets hard for me to follow. Still, those that are the best, get higher priority, so please send only true and awesome ones ;)

For today I prepared a gallery of some new (and awesome) sidewalk chalk drawings. I am aware there are already hundreds in belonging category, but I felt there weren’t any new ones lately, so I uploaded these. Those of you that haven’t seen anything similar before, will have hard time believing me when I tell you that escalator below is nothing but a “mere drawing” on a concrete floor. The chicks just positioned themselves in the correct position and gave additional reality to the whole set. If you go inside the article (assuming you are viewing this from the homepage), you will see bunch more photos taken at different times of day from different angles. Amazing!

I have couple more new chalk drawings on my laptop, similar to Julian Beever’s art work, and will post them soon! If you noticed, I underlined keywords in this text (as usual) and connected them to the best of sidewalk art, so be sure to check all of them (links in this article) and decide which one’s your favorite!

3D Chalk Drawings,

(31 votes)