This would be simple to make with PVC pipe and some small mirrors. Essentially you'd just make a seperate periscope for each eye, oriented horzontally, and fastened together so the whole thing moves as a single unit. This would give your roughly the same "eyespan" as a tyrannosaurus or a very large shark. The EPE was inspired by John McPhee's observation that looking at aerial maps through a cartographer's stereoscopic viewer is like being a giant with eyeballs a mile apart, but with the EPE you can do things like turn your head and attempt to walk around.
[Addendum: Why do this? Curiosity, that's all.]-- Dog Ed, Apr 29 2001 The idea, taken to an extreme by nature http://www.chem.ucl...ad%20close%20up.jpg [ldischler, Sep 14 2005] pseudoscope - these apparently reverse L&R eye-views http://www.grand-il...com/pseudoscope.htmNot the same, but interesting all the same. [Dub, Sep 14 2005] "Attempt" is a good verb there. From what I've learned regarding what we know about the inimitable T-rex, its eyesight would be one thing we would certainly not do well to try to emulate for ourselves.-- globaltourniquet, Apr 29 2001 Cool.
Ordinary binoculars do this to a much lesser degree; the lenses are usually about twice as far apart as your eyeballs.-- egnor, Apr 29 2001 Been wanting to try this myself...see in enhanced 3d. Things close up would look odd, though...-- StarChaser, Apr 29 2001 I don't need my parallax enhanced. I already run into things often enough, thank you.-- nick_n_uit, Apr 30 2001 UnaBubba: Yes! And it strikes me that I have never been attacked by a very large shark, an orca, or a tyranno inside my house! Actually I think this would be more a try-it-and-see-what-it's-like experience than an item of daily apparel. Kind of like your first doobie.-- Dog Ed, Apr 30 2001 Baked... Theres a polish conceptual artist, his name escapes me for the moment (but I get it for you if you bear with me for a few days), he has many different and interesting optical goodies in his collection. The one you have suggested here is like an adjustable version he designed which allow's you to position your eyes with vertical (instead if horizontal) parallax as well as eyes a few mm (so your front door will look like the grand cannyon) apart up to about 20cm apart, I've alway's wanted a set of these spec's myself. He has other stuff which, if it hadn't been made, you'd of never believed it'd get past the dough stage...-- solomungus, Apr 30 2001 wow! hoo BOY, do I want some of this stuff! What if you could get a 50/50 mix of vertical and horizontal parallax, with the distance between respective eyes of each pair at about 3 feet apart? it'd take some getting used to, of course, but dang! that'd be *SO* *COOL*!-- absterge, Apr 30 2001 solomungus - sounds great ; if you could find the name of the artist i'd lurve to delve further into this sick puppy.-- chimpboy, Apr 30 2001 The artist is called Lukaz Skapski, he had a exhibition in Rochester (UK) in June 2000, the exhibition was called "lightworks" - he has a companion book which had all the gadgets in it, I cannot find anything on him on the net (but then I'm lousy at searching for stuff..). He lives in Krakow in Poland... let me know if you find a site with his stuff on it, failing that I'll borrow the book of my mate and scan a few of the pic's in...-- solomungus, Apr 30 2001 solomungus: Thanks for the tip on the Polish light fantastic. absterge, chimpboy: If I get around to making a set of these I'll post the design and put a link here. (Don't hold your breath, but I do intend to build a set of EPEs.)-- Dog Ed, May 03 2001 It might also be fun to orient the eyepieces outwards, so you could look in two directions at once, like a chameleon.-- PotatoStew, May 03 2001 ...or a horse (strange mammals with eyes on the sides of their heads....perhaps you've seen one?)-- Susen, May 03 2001 man, Dog, this is *exactly* the kind of crazy invention that seduces me with its siren call; the muses, they torment me. Make! Build! Do! Use your mortal hands, and fabricate all manner of obtusa! (the vortex-ring launcher/fuel-air explosive assembly [underway], the water-rocket soda bottle fleet, the underwater vortex propelled vehicle [as powered by an extra large condom], etc, etc) If I could find a place to buy surplus stuff sufficiently cheap (and preferably locally, so as to avoid shipping charges), I would do nothing but making this kind of crazy thing. A moment of silence please, as Grande Junquetion has just recently closed its doors... *wipes a tear*-- absterge, May 03 2001 ___parallax_____________parallax___ ___parallax_____________parallax___ ___parallax_____________parallax___ ___parallax_____________parallax___Tangential to this idea, I'm able to diverge my eyes very easily, so that my left eye focuses on the left=hand column of 'parallax' above and my right eye focuses on the right-hand column, and what I see is a single column 'floating' a few inches closer to me than the plane of the screen...-- hippo, May 03 2001 I see three completly different columns, is that bad?...-- salmon, May 03 2001, last modified May 06 2001 OK, one column in focus, apparantly in front of the screen with a blurry column either side.-- hippo, May 05 2001 Aaaugh! Headache! I hate these magic eye things...-- StarChaser, May 06 2001 (churn, churn away...) I recently trained myself to do this very effectively by looking at, what else, soundboards. Those vast arrays of nobs, all exactly the same, make it rather simple to focus nearer or farther. You oughtta try this, hippo. It looks like, depending on how you do it, either the board is about half the size, twice as far away, or that the knobs are as big as your fist (and you can get a real appreciation for the texture of painted metal). Neat-o, and still favorite worthy.-- absterge, Apr 30 2002 I built something like this for estimating distance. I got the idea from watching a WWII documentary...artillery spotters use a 2 meter wide range finder designed exactly as described above but with lenses and calibrations for distance finding. I used a yard stick and simple sights on each end of the yard stick. I would aim one sight at a target some distance away and then making sure the yard stick in the middle did not move, I would aim the other sight at the target. By using trigonomety, measuring the angles of the two sights, I could get a very accurate estimation of distance up to about 500 feet away. This was done strictly for fun and to teach my youngest son about trigonomety.-- Blisterbob, Sep 14 2005 random, halfbakery