CSS Optical Illusions

(alvaromontoro.com)

74 points | by ulrischa 2 hours ago

6 comments

  • myfonj 14 minutes ago
    These "dots appearing only while (not) focused" are known as "extinction illusions", namely

        "25 - Appearing Dots"
    
    is "McAnany's type" [1], and

        "26 - Disappearing Dots"
    
    is known as "Ninio's type" [2], according Akiyoshi Kitaoka's materials. (I have recreated them too few years ago [3][4], before getting to the source.)

    [1] https://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/akitaoka/kieru3e.html#:~:text...

    [2] https://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/akitaoka/kieru3e.html#:~:text...

    [3] https://codepen.io/myf/full/XjdmJy ( scintillation warning)

    [4] https://codepen.io/myf/full/jMqoMW ( scintillation warning)

  • sandpaper26 1 hour ago
    This is cool, but more as a demonstration of interesting CSS techniques than optical illusions in my opinion.

    Also, interestingly, I seem to be able to force myself to "see through" all of these illusions except for induced gradients, which I can't stop seeing unless I cover part of the screen.

  • nilslindemann 1 hour ago
    33 - color fan: There is another interesting optical illusion here: The fan seems to rotate faster when not directly looking at it.
  • russellbeattie 12 minutes ago
    I'll always be amazed at these sorts of optical illusions. For many, even when you stare at them and concentrate, you just can't get your brain to accept the reality.

    The interactivity of these rather than a simple animations really bring home the fact that you can't trust your brain. Stare, tap, magic!

    Having recently seen some clips of a red carpet award thing, I wonder if couture designers are using these illusions nearly as much as they could.

  • encom 2 hours ago
    These are all super dark, for some reason.
    • christophilus 1 hour ago
      You have to actually run them. Otherwise, they're just a dark CodePen preview.
      • encom 56 minutes ago
        Why the extra step of having to click each one? Only a few of them are interactive.
        • d-us-vb 27 minutes ago
          Because codepens can run javascript. And if a page has 50 of them, it might make the page load time much longer. I know that all these examples are pure CSS, and maybe there is a setting in codepen to disable the "Run" button and automatically run it. Still, getting to decide is generally a better pattern than presuming that that's what the user wants, especially when the fact that the code is inside a codepen makes it explicitly not an integral function of the page. "I thought this was just a blog, and now you want me to run all this javascript??" -- some JS hater, probably.

          I appreciate getting to choose as much as possible when code runs.

          • zamadatix 1 minute ago
            Ironically, Codepen introduced a javascript execution requirement to view the pure CSS+HTML in this case.
  • moralestapia 2 hours ago
    Wow, this is great!

    I want to put some of them in my UIs.