Rotating Grid Optical Illusion

By Alex in Everything Else on Aug 23, 2008 at 12:51 pm

This is pretty trippy: David OReilly found that a large grid rotating at a certain speed will appear to group itself into smaller grids, rotating independently.

It appears the persistence of vision effect overrides our knowledge that this is a single grid and divides it up optically. This only seems to work on a uniform grid (I also had interesting results with a brick formation), but the effect is lost when using a checkered texture.

Link

Neat stuff from the NeatoShop:

pebbe
Aug 23rd, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I think it’s an artifact of the grid lines interfering with scan lines of the monitor. I don’t think you will see this effect if you draw it on a board, and rotate the board.
KNfLrPn
Aug 23rd, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I’d like to see it in higher resolution and better frame rate. I’m not convinced that it’s an optical illusion so much as an artifact of the low quality animation.
Brian
Aug 23rd, 2008 at 9:29 pm
I get a forbidden message when I click on the link
Alex
Aug 23rd, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Well, it seems that the host has blocked access to that site. Too bad, it was pretty cool!
Paul in Boca
Aug 23rd, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /blog/2008/07/rotating-grid-illusion/ on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Chad Cloman
Aug 23rd, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Great, it’s been Neatorama-dotted…
ted
Aug 24th, 2008 at 6:21 am
They don’t like you…
Chad Cloman
Aug 24th, 2008 at 7:04 am
It’s back up.

Wow, that’s a weird effect.
avraamov
Aug 24th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
hmmm. not cnvinced either – the horizontal lines definitely interlace at certain points. rapid scrolling up and down stops it as well. i think we’d have seen this in real life before if it were real…

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