3D Anaglyph, Spectrum-style

[HEXdidnt]

I recently saw a post in the PixelArt subreddit which featured a piece of 1-bit artwork which had a 'chromatic aberration' filter applied. Due to the appearance of the colour-shift, I put on a pair of red/blue 3D glasses (which I keep handy, because I enjoy making 3D anaglyphs out of photographs), and found that the filter gave the impression of depth to the image... Consistent depth, but depth nonetheless.

This got me thinking about Spectrum graphics, particularly the monochrome kind... And, while the Spectrum wouldn't be able to output offset red/green/blue channels to create a 3D effect (and, even if it could, it would likely be subject to attribute clash), it's simple enough to fudge the effect in Photoshop:


Naturally, the effectiveness of the 3D effect increases along with image resolution - at 1:1 pixel size, the offsets are overly harsh, while they can be finessed at higher resolutions - but it's a neat effect nonetheless... Might be fun on a PC 'remake' of a classic Spectrum game.

[Joefish]

The game Wanderer came with 3d glasses, but it really didn't work. It used vector graphics drawn in red and cyan, but the attribute squares let it down.

That and TV's don't actually give very pure red / green / blue light colour separation from the phosphor dots, so the separation in the glasses is always a bit ropey. There's always quite a bit of crossover between what you see with each eye.