A remarkable illusion

[nancylebov]

The illusion

The illusion is sufficiently distracting that I've been asked to not have it be automatically visible.

What's remarkable about it is that people have a wide range of reactions to it-- whether it moves, which part of it moves, how fast it moves, and whether it matters whether one is looking at it directly vary from person to person and from time to time for the same person.

I can't see it move at all, but I'm willing to take other people's word for what they see.

Comments

[redrose]

Datapoint: The 2 of us here don't see it move.

[asakiyume]

It does something for me, definitely: I was writing a comment on one blog post and this was below it in my feed, and it kept distracting me.

For me, it stops and starts randomly, but definitely is more likely to seem like it's moving if I'm looking at it either peripherally or with somewhat unfocused eyes. But you can't experience it moving at all

[andrewducker]

I see it more a tiny bit, mostly when I'm looking almost entirely elsewhere. But I don't have the asme level of response as some people seem to.

[ritaxis]

I didn't see it move till I read the caption, and now it moves differently every time I look back at it. Mostly it looks like it's breathing.

[conuly]

Oooh, that's creepy. It's like some oozing mud.

[malkingrey]

It's supposed to move?

For what it's worth, I can never see those 2-D into 3-D pictures, either. It may have something to do with the fact that my eyes don't really match -- I'm farsighted and astygmatic in my left (dominant) eye, and nearsighted in my right eye. Unsurprisingly, my uncorrected depth perception sucks.

[siderea]

...Well I was about to complain about you putting a giant animated gif in my feed. Huh. Wow.

(There's still the giant thing. Could you either put behind a cut, or just limit its size to width=100% or width=600px or something like that?)

[mount_oregano]

I see it move when I don't look straight at it. At the same time, I can see that it isn't really moving. Weird. And it would give me a headache to look for too long because I can't quite make sense of what I'm seeing. Damn you, BBC!