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if, big if, you could swap over your eyes, left to right, what would the world look like?

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Categories: Human Body.

Tags: Eyes, Vision.

 

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MikeAdams#367 says:

It’s not difficult to simulate this. Make a pair of goggles with a mirror system inside that switches the image from the left lens to the right eye and VV. 

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posted on 2010-11-19 13:28:43 | Report abuse


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tbrucenyc says:

Your depth perception would not work right.

At a store that demonstrates 3D televisions, or in a 3D movie theater, put the glasses on upside down. The left and right images will reverse.

Far away should register as close... and close should seem far away, but in a complex scene it may just be weird. I'll try it the next time I get a chance.

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posted on 2010-11-19 22:15:13 | Report abuse


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Jon-Richfield says:

That was a neat, practical suggestion Bruce!

More generally, inverted depth perception is surprisningly treacherous. Logically one would expect to see things inverted in their distance away from you, for example an apple should look hollow rather than convex, but one's brain does funny things about inverse clues when looking through a sterescope. Then again there is lighting. One's impression of lunar craters or erosion channels seen in aerial photographs, when misinterpreted because of confusing lighting, can be hellish hard to make sense of. 

It gives an intriguing and eerie effect when a sculptor carves a hollow bust in white material, a sort of hollow cast of a face instead of a convex statue of someone's head. Suitably lighted and seen from a very modest distance, it looks like a surreally floating three-dimensional head, correctly convex instead of concave. However, shockingly, (though logically when one knows what is going on) as you inspect it while walking from side to side, the shift in parallax refuses to be denied, and the head seems to be turning in the wrong direction.

Probably there are examples of such sculptures to be seen on line, but I don't know where. However, I cannot imagine anything on a screen giving the same sense of uncanniness.

 

Hmmm... ray tracing...?  Holograms...?

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posted on 2010-11-20 08:25:56 | Report abuse


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Paul_Pedant says:

I imagine your perception would adapt fairly soon.

In the 1890s, a psychologist named George Stratton realised that your visual image would be inverted (left-right and top-bottom) on your retina, and he wondered how babies adapt to this. He wore inverting spectacles, and found after 4 or 5 days that his mind suddenly accepted the inversion and he was no longer aware of it, except when he concentrated hard on specific objects.

When he ended the experiment, his mind took several more days to re-adapt, during which he again saw everthing inverted. The experiment appears to have been repeated several times since.

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posted on 2010-11-21 22:01:52 | Report abuse


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