Popple spiral illusion

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Popple spiral illusion

✓ Published0🌍 Public

Last edited Jan 25, 2019

Created on Jan 23, 2019

The Popple spiral illusion distorts perception of concentric rings, making them appear as spirals, zigzags, or cardioids through moving blurred dot patterns. The visualization displays six side-by-side canvases, each showing a different illusion variant, including a static spiral and a random pattern that updates every second. The code uses d3-timer’s `d3.interval` for animation and Canvas 2D APIs like `getContext`, `filter`, and `translate` to draw blurred, semi-transparent points over grey backgrounds. Each illusion is generated from a hidden points canvas, cropped and layered to create the visual effect.

AI-generated description

This block is a recreation that attemps to recreate an optical illusion I'm particularly fan of, called the popple illusion. This particular illusion disturbs perception of lines. Here, concentric rings no longer appear as rings (at least, for me !). It works also for 3, 2, or even 1 ring(s).

More on this optical illusion at Akiyoshi Kitaoka's dedicated web site's page.

Acknowledgments to:

<a href='https://github.com/d3/d3-timer'>d3-timer.js</a> (v1)
<a href='http://blockbuilder.org'>blockbuilder.org</a>

gpl-3.0 Licensed

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