General Development Plans

The basic illusion suite framework and preliminary set of illusions is nearing completion. The only substantial gap remaining is the text to fill out the guided tour pages. I have yet to receive much if any feedback regarding the overall design of the presentation so some aspects may need changing after exposure to a larger audience.

There are also a number of outstanding details relating to the existing illusion demos. A list is maintained in the action items section below.

After the existing set of illusions have been put into a presentable form, then additions can begin. The first priority here is to create a set of templates, both for the HTML text and the Java code, along with instructions that are sufficiently detailed to allow modestly experienced programmers to add their own illusions to the collection. Then, as time permits, I will add new illusions myself. Candidates for illusion are listed below.

Specific Action Items

• The way I have things set up, each applet runs in a window and thread that are both separate from the window and thread of the applet that launched it. This makes it possible leave the demo running while you browse different pages. This arrangement seems to pose a problem to Netscape Navigator 3 Gold running on Irix systems (the X-Windows version of Navigator 3 Gold appears to work fine on other Unix platforms, and I have encountered no other combination of browser and platform which exhibits the same problem). Normally I would just chock this up to a bug in the browser and not give it any further thought, but this particular combination is the default browser available in the Imager lab and quite possibly in UGL as well (I need to check). Since these are the places where these demos will be most often used, this needs to get fixed.
• Apart from that, there are no other outstanding items. The demos certainly aren't perfect, but I have followed up on all of the comments and suggestions that I have been given so far and I don't see any serious flaws or impediments myself.

New Illusions

• The Muller-Lyer and related illusions
• Impossible figures (Penrose triangle, Escher, etc.)
• Gestalt effects, especially masking of familiar figures
• Geometric vanishes (can they be reproduced without copyright infringement?)
• Mach bands -- copy the NeXTStep implementation
• The peripheral pinwheel and Benham's Disc (attempt them at least)