cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/42134968
My time has come!
The above stereographic image is for cross-eyed viewing (most stereograms are wall-eyed, so you may need to put your finger in front of your screen until this one comes into focus)
This is an image of Honolulu, Hawaii, published by NASA. Note Diamond Head (the volcanic crater) in the south.
Here are some other stereopairs published by JPL:
Wheeler Ridge, California
Mount Saint Helens
Salt Lake Valley, Utah
Wellington, New Zealand
The clever thing that Google Earth can do is load in detail dynamically. When you get close, only a few hundred feet of high res assets need to be loaded to trick the brain into believing it.
Here, you have only the resolution of the image with a hint of extra depth data from the second perspective. Your brain interprets it to be way more lifelike than a typical image because of the extra dimension, but if you got close, it would remain super blurry/blocky, just like it looks when you pinch to zoom all the way on one side of the image.