Shifting Dots Optical Illusion

Here’s an incredible optical illusion David D. Dario D. created and submitted for our consideration. You’ll need to wait few seconds before the .gif file fully loads, but when it does I promise you’ll love it! Once the animation has started, you’ll quickly notice how outer-rim dots begin shifting themselves up and down. But what is so cool here, is that this is actually an illusion! Our little dots haven’t changed their starting position one bit! The only thing changing here is their color; from white to black and vice-versa!

57 Replies to “Shifting Dots Optical Illusion”

    1. no they are not, if u look closely at one dot, u can see it kinda wipes color on and off. so cool illusion!!

  1. Very cool. I am guessing it has something to do with the shadows. Even the white dots have shadows at the bottom. The shadow increases and goes almost to the top and the dots “rise up” with the shadow. Shadows normally move with motion, so our visual system may be trained to perceive movement when it sees changing shadows.

  2. It’d be cool if they were all shifting outward instead of just up, so it’d be like pulsing. And then you could make the change go in a kind of circular way so itd be rotating too! pretty cool though.

  3. Don’t forget the fact that one pixel on your screen are created from more than one eletronic LED. Even thought the space they use are very tiny, there is still a position shift.

    So yes, probably the images would still have a moving illusion on a sheet of paper if that was possible, but this is mostly cause by an electronic architecture. :-)

    Nice to look at anyway!

    1. A pixel on today’s screens are much too small to add to the shit of the image. Also, the RGB components are positioned from left to right. The dots move up and down.

    2. Black and White in terms of pixel on the monitor means lighting up all colours and turning them off, so there’s no shifting at all in this sense.

  4. At one glance, it looks like it is an animation. but if you put your mouse pointer at a dot, it really didn’t move! I am guessing that the black color goes over the white color from bottom to top, causing it to look as if the dots are moving!

  5. the black colour change fills the dots from bottom to top, almost like a glass filling with water, I’m sure it has something to do with it. because black’s a strong colour it “lifts” the dots.
    I may well be wrong!

  6. hey vurdlak, theres a chain mail going on, and there are a bunch of funny illusions. Some of them had already been posted, but most havent. most of them are either RELATIVE SIZES illusions or the thing where a face from a book or a mag kinda blends into the persons head… but most are pretty cool, and some are just HILARIOUS!!! if u want to use some, post one at a time, this way this batch will last longer…

    1. what the… i cant download pics from my pc???? without a url??? plz give me ur email, ill send them then.

    2. ok first off its really dumb to give someone ur email wen u dont know them. and second, half the ppl who comment here or even look at the illusion prolly cldnt care less. im sry 2 burst ur bubble, but no one cares.

  7. It’s the shadows on the bottom of the dots– they always stay dark. So when the rest of the dot turns black, it merges with the shadow and seems to move upwards.

  8. I don’t really think this is clever at all.

    One, if you move the “bottom” of an object up, you are still technically moving an object, even if in this case you could more think of it a rotating say a ball backwards (one that was half black and white).

    Secondly, would this work with any colour other than black? Your brain sort of thinks of the black as a shadow from the white moving, which isn’t really a trick.

  9. How come that the pixels on the smaller version (on google gadget) are moving all over the show?
    And no that is not an illusion, if I put my mouse pointer on it you can see them move(On the google gadget page).

  10. This isn’t really an optical illusion, they creator used shadows to simulate depth. Common graphic design practice.

  11. The white actually pans down causing the effect. It is not alternating between just black and white but the white is overlaying on top of it by sliding down. This makes it seem like the dots are moving.

  12. those who think it is an illusion need to go back to third grade.

    It is the same effect as if you would move a lamp above a sphere. It is not just a color change.

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