First, if you don't know what an autostereogram is, see the link.

Now, imagine a first person shooter game where the colors have been discarded, but the shapes and depth info have been retained, with every frame of animation presented as an autostereogram.

The background pattern used might be an image selected for the theme of the level, or might be random dots (probably with new random dots generated for each frame).

Hardware acceleration might be needed to get a decent framerate.
-- goldbb, Apr 29 2011

Autosterogram at the wiki http://en.wikipedia...wiki/Autostereogram
This link has an animated one [metarinka, May 01 2011]

face-stereograms http://www.colorste...ue_gal/_bluedir.htm
Contains very mild nudity. The first image works quite well. Look at it wall-eyed, and everything makes sense. Look at it cross-eyed, and the face shows the hollow mask illusion, while the perspective of the rest of the image becomes scrambled.. [spidermother, May 01 2011]

Quake 2 Autostereogram mod http://www.leweyg.c.../SIRD/q2/index.html
It works, sort of. [erenjay, Jun 23 2012]

It would be fun if you could get it to work. Actually, any autostereogramic animation would be cool, though resolution would be limited (the eyes need large enough "dots" to grab hold of, and the depth profile can't be any finer than this).

How do autostereograms work with "real" scenes, though? For instance, what if the scene itself contains some repeated element (for instance, two or more fence posts)? On the other hand, once you've "locked" onto an autostereogram, it's pretty stable, so you might be OK.

[+] because I live autostereograms and would love to see them animated, even though I think it might be tedious to play a game that way.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 30 2011


I just googled and found various types of animated autostereograms. The wall-eyed versions using a random-dot background are very coarse in resolution, and it's not easy to follow complex motion, but perhaps they're not as good as they could be. The cross-eyed versions are much better, since they have full colour and as much resolution as you want.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 30 2011


+1 for novelty. As a hardcore gamer it would be nearly impossible to hit anything, might be able to use the effect to create the illusion of a 3d game. I feel it would be better suited for something simple like a puzzle game.
-- metarinka, May 01 2011


XaoS fractal software has a random dot stereogram mode, which works during real time pan and zoom. It's a little difficult to maintain the stereo effect against the distracting, constantly changing dots, but it shows that real-time stereograms, and therefore this game, are possible.

Great link, [metarinka]. That's one of the most comprehensive and enjoyable wikipedia articles I've seen.

[Max] The important distinction is not between wall-eyed and cross-eyed; my understanding is that any type of stereogram can be rendered either way. It might be coincidence or fashion that results in different types corresponding to the two viewing modes. (While I was typing the preceding sentence, a character on Hamish Macbeth in my live TV window said 'coincidence'.)

If you look at a stereogram the wrong way - for instance, look cross-eyed at a wall-eyed stereogram - the depths appear to be inverted. A cool thing I discovered today while playing with this is that human faces don't appear inverted - they appear to rise out of the image, as usual! It's the stereogram equivalent of the hollow mask illusion, where the brain's tendency to construct a 3D face overrides non-face depth perception.
-- spidermother, May 01 2011


//A cool thing I discovered today.....//

That is intriguing. I love the hollow mask illusion! Do you have a link to any such face-stereograms?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 01 2011


I like that, [spidermother]. "Mild nudity".

We could use that concept to define having one's face visible.
-- normzone, May 01 2011


[Jutta] once suggested that people who go barefoot are micro-nudists.
-- spidermother, May 04 2011


What about sandals? Where do they fit on the spectrum of relative unclothedness?
-- 8th of 7, May 04 2011


Baked. see <link>. I tried it a while ago, it is actually not extremely hard to hold focus, but it is really hard to do anything useful in the game without constantly switching between stereogram and normal mode.
-- erenjay, Jun 23 2012


small computer controlled puppets against back-projected scenery?
-- not_morrison_rm, Jun 23 2012



random, halfbakery