Mighty Optical Illusions » window

Thoughts On Future of The Web…

Vurdlak — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:24:40 +0000

The web is changing. It’s evolving rapidly, specially as of late. It’s becoming more social, localized and real-time. Instant and distributed is the new trend. It’s adapt or loose the battle for other web properties if they want to maintain their popularity. By now, you probably heard about new redesign of twitter, one that happened sometime yesterday. I think this is where future of the web and information is heading. Why am I writing all this? It got me thinking how maintaining this website alone won’t be possible anytime soon. We need to follow the trend, and evolve as well. Think I should put more work in connecting and hiring professional individuals, and re-architect our website with more sophisticated functions and design. What do you think? What do you think is the future of Mighty Optical Illusion? Where do you see us head next (design, functionality, distribution…)? Which things you like here, and which ones you don’t? Am not sure if all my thoughts relate to you, still here’s a nice set of Impossible Windows by István Orosz just to keep up with the illusion trend ;)

Video: Ames Window Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:33:00 +0000

Before we start with our newest illusion, I’d like to ask you another simple question via poll I have included. This is the easiest way for me to get enough answers in such a short period, thus can make my further decisions faster!

Let me explain in little more detail: some of you may have noticed, how I started adding self-hosted video players to this site. You can see it in action in this post, but also available here. What do you think about it? I noticed it needs some time to load itself, but its visual design, and possibilities it provides is why I chose it. So begin playing with it, and then answer this poll below!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

I’ll have to monitor my bandwidth these days, to see if our servers can take such amount of load, but I should have more information to share with you tomorrow.

Now that we covered the video part, let’s jump to the illusion itself! Check the Ames Room illusion first, if you haven’t already seen it! Today’s illusion is fairly difficult to see, but once you do – it’s amazing. Focus on the rotation of the rod. It appears to continually rotate in one direction while the window appears to reverse. This causes the illusion of rod passing through the window. Can you see it? Please report your findings!

Muller-Lyer Ticket Window

Vurdlak — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:28:35 +0000

The original Müller-Lyer illusion is an optical illusion consisting of nothing more than an arrow. When viewers are asked to place a mark on the figure at the mid-point, they invariably place it more towards the tail end. Another variation, we often blogged about consists of two arrow-like figures, one with both ends pointing in, and the other with both ends pointing out. When asked to judge the lengths of the two lines, which are often equal, viewers will typically claim that the line with outward pointing arrows is longer. One possible explanation is that one sees the lines as three-dimensional, such as the outgoing and ingoing corners of a room. Another possible explanation is that the line with arrows pointing outwards may simply appear longer because the arrows themselves extend past the line. The other explanation could be simply because outward pointing arrows subliminally suggest that the line is growing.

One of the red vertical lines is actually longer. Can you tell which one is it?

In the example above, we used exactly the same surrounding suggested. In the Ticket Window Example, both arrows represent outgoing and ingoing corners of a room. It’s almost obvious that the ingoing corner’s arrow is much longer than the other. But look what happens if we fade the background and leave the arrows untouched. Shamefully, this didn’t make any difference. The right arrow still looks larger then the left one:

But when we further fade the background to the point where it almost become invisible, and even more important – if we completely cut the pointing arrow heads, the results are outstanding. Not only did we get the solution we thought we would (resulting with both lines becoming equal), surprisingly we find out that the left arrow was in fact lengthier than the ingoing corner’s one!

Store Window Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:08:15 +0000

As he said in his own words, Emil is a great admirer of our posts. Passing by a store nearby where he lives, Emil noticed an interesting illusion and decided to take a picture of it, so he can share it with us. It took some time before I understood where the illusion hides, but I confirm it’s a good one. How many shelves do you see in this presentation rack? Would you consider both of us crazy, if we stated there are only 3 shelves present in this photo below? Yeah, that’s right! Before you read Emil’s explanation, try and spot the illusion yourselves. There are few more additional shots after the break.

The secret is that the end of the presentation rack has 2 mirrors, both placed at 45 degrees towards the street. These mirrors give the impression that the rack continues sideways. In reality, there is only one rack and two mirrors” – Emil

Seen from different angle:

Which Way Does The Window Face?

Vurdlak — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 03:38:00 +0000

Kelly Harris asks us: “Which way does the window face”? Let’s see! Umm… Not as simple as I thought it would be. The principle of this Escher like, impossible object is same as with bidirectional face and safe doors illusion. This is old school illusion, as you see. I kinda like them more. Kelly also writes: “I’ve spent two weeks at work going through all of your illusions – very interesting. Found this at another site but unsure where. I hadn’t seen it in your collection”. By the way, just found out that the author behind this is Sandro Del Prete.