6 ms·

Akiyoshi’s Illusion Pages

392 points by robin_reala 3y ago

michaelcampbell 3y ago
Simply beautiful.
tempaway75751 3y ago
The most mind blowing optical illusion I've seen are Kokichi Sugihara's Ambiguous Objects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtA6u1HIqbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtA6u1HIqbg
- nojs 3y ago
  A similar one that I like, and you can easily make yourself: https://www.moillusions.com/dragon-illusion/ https://www.moillusions.com/dragon-illusion/
  - catbird 3y ago
    That was a fun little project. It looks even better in person!
    - albert_e 3y ago
      is there a printable template / instructions somewhere? EDIT: my bad -- I skkiped over to youtube video -- see the instructions in liked blog post now. Thanks
alberto_ol 3y ago
Previous submissions, only the older ones have comments https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Akiyoshi%E2%80%99s+Illusion+Pages+%28ritsumei.ac.jp%29 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Akiyoshi%E2%80%99s+Illusion+Pages+...
notsahil 3y ago
Akiyoshi's twitter also has cool illusions: - https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka - https://nitter.net/AkiyoshiKitaoka https://nitter.net/AkiyoshiKitaoka
- bhtru 3y ago
  Nitter is dead no?
  - pbhjpbhj 3y ago
    It worked for me.
dr_dshiv 3y ago
My mind is blown. I wonder whether the “Rauschenberg Illusion” would count. Named after Robert Rauschenberg’s blank white canvases which show that big white fields are filled with illusions of color and form from our visual system. (Or at least, they are for me. I’m not nuts, am I?)
TeaDude 3y ago
I'm very shocked that these were only discovered so recently (Well. If you consider the early 2000's to be "recent". I'd have assumed that we'd have found these out earlier) I suppose that's why they were all the rage in childrens' books and museums around that time.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
aimor 3y ago
This one almost hurts, forget the approaching black hole I get dazzling speckles of white light. : http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/Plaid-tunnel02-040-blackhole01.png http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/Plaid-tunnel02-040-b...
- GolfPopper 3y ago
  Oof. Yes. I don't get the speckles, but the middle portions of the tunnel "shudder" like looking a something slightly out of focus at extremely high power through a telescope, and it feels like I'm about to get a migraine.
  - aimor 3y ago
    I notice it has to be large to get the speckles (can't see them on my phone), and only with both eyes open.
willmeyers 3y ago
Can these affect your vision (long-term) if you stare at them for too long? I feel like many of these images produce similar effects to the McCollough effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollough_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollough_effect
- joshspankit 3y ago
  This is an interesting question and one that we’re possibly just on the leading edge of being able to ask correctly. The answers are likely to be varied and along multiple axis: - Do they affect the muscles of the eye, especially the ones that affect the lens - Do they affect the rods/cones (and do they equally affect people with genetic differences) - Do they affect the way the signals are sent to the brain - Do they affect the visual cortex itself and - Do they affect the brain’s processing of visual input in some way In my personal experience, I’d say we’d need to look at someone for a minimum of 3 years, and ideally 5 or more.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  When I was young (maybe 8 or so?) my mom got me a book of B&W moiré patterns. It consisted of a book of B&W patterns and a clear plastic sheet also with similar patterns. When you overlaid the plastic sheet over the patterns in the book is when you got the moiré patterns. Besides seeing yellows and other fringe colors appear from the moiré, I always wondered if the patterns were linked to ocular migraines I would have for some decades after. (Edit: yeah, this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2446119.Optical_Designs_in_Motion_with_Moire_Overlays https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2446119.Optical_Designs_...)
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  I could imagine that it will change the way you perceive things. There are experiments where people got goggles that switched the left and right eyes and people adjusted after a few days.
  - david422 3y ago
    That's pretty wild.
fny 3y ago
Are there rules for creating these illusions?
- guyomes 3y ago
  Mark Changizi had an interesting insight on how some illusions work [1]. What we see is a reconstruction by the brain interpolated from our sensors. The idea of Mark is that the image is not only an interpolation of the present, but actually also an extrapolation of what the image will be in the next tenth of a second. For tasks such as catching a ball, this would allow us to compensate for the delay of the signal between our brain and our muscles. Based on this idea, he wrote a classification of many illusions [2]. [1]: https://www.livescience.com/4950-key-optical-illusions-discovered.html https://www.livescience.com/4950-key-optical-illusions-disco... [2]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1080/03640210802035191 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1080/03640210802...
xwdv 3y ago
I wonder if any 8-bit era games used these kinds of illusions to simulate advanced shader effects.
grilledchickenw 3y ago
The second black hole one "Approaching black hole: yesterday" is stunning. I cannot believe it's a still image. http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/saishin69e.html http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/saishin69e.html
- Solvency 3y ago
  Am I alone in not understanding this black hole one... it's a sequence of three obviously distinct still images in which the black center is larger than the previous image. Meanwhile, each image on its own is offering no kind of perceptive illusion to me...
  - tstrimple 3y ago
    For me it doesn’t seem to grow. But the blurred edges definitely show movement from my perception with both eyes open. If I close one eye the effect goes away altogether.
  - gowld 3y ago
    The intent is that the black hole grows while you stare at it. Not all illusions work on everyone in every environment.
  - block_dagger 3y ago
    Staring at any of them individually makes the central circle appear to grow. Bottom one is most effective for my eyes. Creepy!
  - kazinator 3y ago
    I don't intuitively understand any illusion. I don't have conscious introspection into what the layers of neurons are doing between the retina and conscious visual perception. The layers of neurons use certain indirect cues in order to detect size, depth and movement. Those cues do their job in most circumstances, but test cases can be constructed which falsely trigger those cues. That's just an intellectual generality that doesn't explain anything specific.
lisper 3y ago
It's possible to create "impossible" shapes in real life: https://flownet.com/ron/trips/Europe2023/pause/206.html https://flownet.com/ron/trips/Europe2023/pause/206.html
- gowld 3y ago
  2D projections of 3D impossible shapes, yes.
joshu 3y ago
He posts regularly here: https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka
3seashells 3y ago
Persistent Visual cortex defects. Now imagine the brain riddled with similar defects, when it's comes to reasoning and learning. If there was one creature not defect, the whole rest of the zoo would be sad.
gowld 3y ago
> Caution, continued > Some of the pictures on this website can cause dizziness or might possibly epileptic seizures. The latter happens when the brain can't handle the conflicting information from your two eyes. If you start feeling unwell when using this website, immediately cover one eye with your hand and then leave the page. Do not close your eyes because that can make the attack worse.
ceddec 3y ago
A lot of graphic illusions are used commercially e.g for product advertising like here: https://www.shapeshiftermedia.com https://www.shapeshiftermedia.com
kazinator 3y ago
Some of the movement illusions really pop out if you slowly move your finger across the image and track it with your eyes. Or use a mouse pointer similarly if you're on desktop.
moritzwarhier 3y ago
I was really happy about the first one, "spontaneously", including the quotes, this is such an apt description! Alas, for me it seems to occur mostly on eye movement/focus change.. which happens to happen... spontaneously
btilly 3y ago
I used to have a high quality printout of the rotating snakes illusion by my desk. I had people who refused to be at my desk because it creeped them out that they absolutely knew the paper couldn't be moving, but their brains kept seeing the snakes rotate.
- thanatos519 3y ago
  What a great filter that must be!
ayx 3y ago
I can never see these illusions :/ Only the bulge works. Movement I can’t see at all. Am I supposed to look at it a certain way? I tried at different distances. I’ve tried using larger screens. Nothing..
- pvg 3y ago
  A lot of the movement ones are more noticeable with actual movement so scrolling a little bit could help. I notice them popping more when I scroll through his twitter feed.
susam 3y ago
One of Akiyoshi Kitaoka's recent work that I found absolutely stunning is the following illusion where a ring of one colour appears to be either in front of or behind two rings of another colour: https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/1681268618485456896 https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/16812686184854568... https://nitter.net/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/1681268618485456896 https://nitter.net/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/168126861848545689... To my perception, the blue ring appears to float above the red rings. It feels a bit like an autostereogram where a 3-dimensional image emerges out of a 2-dimensional image. However, there is no autostereogram in this image and there is no crossing of eyes involved. The 3-dimensional image arises out of an otherwise plain image of differently coloured rings on a dark background. An analysis of this illusion is available here: http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/Kitaoka2015_ReferenceWorkEntry_Chromostereopsis.pdf http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/Kitaoka2015_Referenc...
- magic_hamster 3y ago
  That's a very cool illusion. First time I see it. I wonder if the color patterns on the different rings have something to do with it.
- epiccoleman 3y ago
  That one, for me, is sorta like the ballerina thing, in that with a small mental effort I can make it switch between the two states. But honestly my first glance at it, they look largely "flush" - not a super strong 3d effect in either direction.
  - Proziam 3y ago
    Even with effort I couldn't make them not appear 'flush' and I'm beginning to question my sanity
- Tao3300 3y ago
  I see the red rings in the front, but if I close one eye, they look flat. That was confusing, but the paper explains it nicely.
- 3y ago
dang 3y ago
Related: Akiyoshi's Illusion Pages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785081 - Jan 2021 (17 comments) Akiyoshi's Illusion Pages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13793715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13793715 - March 2017 (32 comments) Akiyoshi's illusion pages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5697783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5697783 - May 2013 (15 comments)
weirdkid 3y ago
This is great stuff. I’ve had this bookmarked in my browser for almost 20 years! I should see what else I have in there…

392 points by robin_reala 3y ago

Simply beautiful.

The most mind blowing optical illusion I've seen are Kokichi Sugihara's Ambiguous Objects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtA6u1HIqbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtA6u1HIqbg

nojs 3y ago
A similar one that I like, and you can easily make yourself: https://www.moillusions.com/dragon-illusion/ https://www.moillusions.com/dragon-illusion/
- catbird 3y ago
  That was a fun little project. It looks even better in person!
  - albert_e 3y ago
    is there a printable template / instructions somewhere? EDIT: my bad -- I skkiped over to youtube video -- see the instructions in liked blog post now. Thanks

alberto_ol 3y ago

Previous submissions, only the older ones have comments https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Akiyoshi%E2%80%99s+Illusion+Pages+%28ritsumei.ac.jp%29 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Akiyoshi%E2%80%99s+Illusion+Pages+...

notsahil 3y ago

Akiyoshi's twitter also has cool illusions: - https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka - https://nitter.net/AkiyoshiKitaoka https://nitter.net/AkiyoshiKitaoka

bhtru 3y ago
Nitter is dead no?
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  It worked for me.

dr_dshiv 3y ago

My mind is blown. I wonder whether the “Rauschenberg Illusion” would count. Named after Robert Rauschenberg’s blank white canvases which show that big white fields are filled with illusions of color and form from our visual system. (Or at least, they are for me. I’m not nuts, am I?)

TeaDude 3y ago

I'm very shocked that these were only discovered so recently (Well. If you consider the early 2000's to be "recent". I'd have assumed that we'd have found these out earlier) I suppose that's why they were all the rage in childrens' books and museums around that time.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

aimor 3y ago

This one almost hurts, forget the approaching black hole I get dazzling speckles of white light. : http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/Plaid-tunnel02-040-blackhole01.png http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/Plaid-tunnel02-040-b...

GolfPopper 3y ago
Oof. Yes. I don't get the speckles, but the middle portions of the tunnel "shudder" like looking a something slightly out of focus at extremely high power through a telescope, and it feels like I'm about to get a migraine.
- aimor 3y ago
  I notice it has to be large to get the speckles (can't see them on my phone), and only with both eyes open.

willmeyers 3y ago

Can these affect your vision (long-term) if you stare at them for too long? I feel like many of these images produce similar effects to the McCollough effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollough_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollough_effect

joshspankit 3y ago
This is an interesting question and one that we’re possibly just on the leading edge of being able to ask correctly. The answers are likely to be varied and along multiple axis: - Do they affect the muscles of the eye, especially the ones that affect the lens - Do they affect the rods/cones (and do they equally affect people with genetic differences) - Do they affect the way the signals are sent to the brain - Do they affect the visual cortex itself and - Do they affect the brain’s processing of visual input in some way In my personal experience, I’d say we’d need to look at someone for a minimum of 3 years, and ideally 5 or more.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
When I was young (maybe 8 or so?) my mom got me a book of B&W moiré patterns. It consisted of a book of B&W patterns and a clear plastic sheet also with similar patterns. When you overlaid the plastic sheet over the patterns in the book is when you got the moiré patterns. Besides seeing yellows and other fringe colors appear from the moiré, I always wondered if the patterns were linked to ocular migraines I would have for some decades after. (Edit: yeah, this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2446119.Optical_Designs_in_Motion_with_Moire_Overlays https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2446119.Optical_Designs_...)
rqtwteye 3y ago
I could imagine that it will change the way you perceive things. There are experiments where people got goggles that switched the left and right eyes and people adjusted after a few days.
- david422 3y ago
  That's pretty wild.

fny 3y ago

Are there rules for creating these illusions?

guyomes 3y ago
Mark Changizi had an interesting insight on how some illusions work [1]. What we see is a reconstruction by the brain interpolated from our sensors. The idea of Mark is that the image is not only an interpolation of the present, but actually also an extrapolation of what the image will be in the next tenth of a second. For tasks such as catching a ball, this would allow us to compensate for the delay of the signal between our brain and our muscles. Based on this idea, he wrote a classification of many illusions [2]. [1]: https://www.livescience.com/4950-key-optical-illusions-discovered.html https://www.livescience.com/4950-key-optical-illusions-disco... [2]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1080/03640210802035191 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1080/03640210802...

xwdv 3y ago

I wonder if any 8-bit era games used these kinds of illusions to simulate advanced shader effects.

grilledchickenw 3y ago

The second black hole one "Approaching black hole: yesterday" is stunning. I cannot believe it's a still image. http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/saishin69e.html http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/saishin69e.html

Solvency 3y ago
Am I alone in not understanding this black hole one... it's a sequence of three obviously distinct still images in which the black center is larger than the previous image. Meanwhile, each image on its own is offering no kind of perceptive illusion to me...
- tstrimple 3y ago
  For me it doesn’t seem to grow. But the blurred edges definitely show movement from my perception with both eyes open. If I close one eye the effect goes away altogether.
- gowld 3y ago
  The intent is that the black hole grows while you stare at it. Not all illusions work on everyone in every environment.
- block_dagger 3y ago
  Staring at any of them individually makes the central circle appear to grow. Bottom one is most effective for my eyes. Creepy!
- kazinator 3y ago
  I don't intuitively understand any illusion. I don't have conscious introspection into what the layers of neurons are doing between the retina and conscious visual perception. The layers of neurons use certain indirect cues in order to detect size, depth and movement. Those cues do their job in most circumstances, but test cases can be constructed which falsely trigger those cues. That's just an intellectual generality that doesn't explain anything specific.

lisper 3y ago

It's possible to create "impossible" shapes in real life: https://flownet.com/ron/trips/Europe2023/pause/206.html https://flownet.com/ron/trips/Europe2023/pause/206.html

gowld 3y ago
2D projections of 3D impossible shapes, yes.

joshu 3y ago

He posts regularly here: https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka

3seashells 3y ago

Persistent Visual cortex defects. Now imagine the brain riddled with similar defects, when it's comes to reasoning and learning. If there was one creature not defect, the whole rest of the zoo would be sad.

gowld 3y ago

> Caution, continued > Some of the pictures on this website can cause dizziness or might possibly epileptic seizures. The latter happens when the brain can't handle the conflicting information from your two eyes. If you start feeling unwell when using this website, immediately cover one eye with your hand and then leave the page. Do not close your eyes because that can make the attack worse.

ceddec 3y ago

A lot of graphic illusions are used commercially e.g for product advertising like here: https://www.shapeshiftermedia.com https://www.shapeshiftermedia.com

kazinator 3y ago

Some of the movement illusions really pop out if you slowly move your finger across the image and track it with your eyes. Or use a mouse pointer similarly if you're on desktop.

moritzwarhier 3y ago

I was really happy about the first one, "spontaneously", including the quotes, this is such an apt description! Alas, for me it seems to occur mostly on eye movement/focus change.. which happens to happen... spontaneously

btilly 3y ago

I used to have a high quality printout of the rotating snakes illusion by my desk. I had people who refused to be at my desk because it creeped them out that they absolutely knew the paper couldn't be moving, but their brains kept seeing the snakes rotate.

thanatos519 3y ago
What a great filter that must be!

ayx 3y ago

I can never see these illusions :/ Only the bulge works. Movement I can’t see at all. Am I supposed to look at it a certain way? I tried at different distances. I’ve tried using larger screens. Nothing..

pvg 3y ago
A lot of the movement ones are more noticeable with actual movement so scrolling a little bit could help. I notice them popping more when I scroll through his twitter feed.

susam 3y ago

One of Akiyoshi Kitaoka's recent work that I found absolutely stunning is the following illusion where a ring of one colour appears to be either in front of or behind two rings of another colour: https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/1681268618485456896 https://twitter.com/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/16812686184854568... https://nitter.net/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/1681268618485456896 https://nitter.net/AkiyoshiKitaoka/status/168126861848545689... To my perception, the blue ring appears to float above the red rings. It feels a bit like an autostereogram where a 3-dimensional image emerges out of a 2-dimensional image. However, there is no autostereogram in this image and there is no crossing of eyes involved. The 3-dimensional image arises out of an otherwise plain image of differently coloured rings on a dark background. An analysis of this illusion is available here: http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/Kitaoka2015_ReferenceWorkEntry_Chromostereopsis.pdf http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/Kitaoka2015_Referenc...

magic_hamster 3y ago
That's a very cool illusion. First time I see it. I wonder if the color patterns on the different rings have something to do with it.
epiccoleman 3y ago
That one, for me, is sorta like the ballerina thing, in that with a small mental effort I can make it switch between the two states. But honestly my first glance at it, they look largely "flush" - not a super strong 3d effect in either direction.
- Proziam 3y ago
  Even with effort I couldn't make them not appear 'flush' and I'm beginning to question my sanity
Tao3300 3y ago
I see the red rings in the front, but if I close one eye, they look flat. That was confusing, but the paper explains it nicely.
3y ago

dang 3y ago

Related: Akiyoshi's Illusion Pages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785081 - Jan 2021 (17 comments) Akiyoshi's Illusion Pages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13793715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13793715 - March 2017 (32 comments) Akiyoshi's illusion pages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5697783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5697783 - May 2013 (15 comments)

weirdkid 3y ago

This is great stuff. I’ve had this bookmarked in my browser for almost 20 years! I should see what else I have in there…