This is an experiment in the form of a texture pack. We are not sure whether it qualifies as an actual texture pack (hence the title), but this seems the right place to post it regardless.
The original idea was just to see what it would be like to see through the blocks of Minecraft. (Do not groan, it gets better.) We soon found out about the noclip setting in Single Player Commands and the many "X-ray" texture packs, but that was not exactly what we were after. We wanted to find a way to see the foreground and background at the same time.
After much trial and error we did find something we think is interesting enough to pass on. We are still not exactly sure why this works, but with this particular pattern of partial transparency, a curious thing happens. When you stand still, the foreground visual patterns cohere and the background patterns become indistinct; your eyes can't make them into anything, so they are perceived as noise on the foreground, which alone looks real. When you move, what is below ground coheres and takes precedence over the foreground, which looks like noise.
Here is a screenshot, but bear in mind that the effect of this experiment is almost impossible to convey in a still image.
Better is this video, which shows what it looks like when you are flying over the landscape. (Please excuse the video being overdone: we were playing with all the buttons in iMovie. The audio track is from wikicommons, with some filtering in Audacity, which also has many interesting buttons.)
But even the video doesn't show the effect very well, what with lag and pixels being cut out and all. You gotta go there. It is an interesting, even surreal, visual experience. The landscape seems to expand and contract vertically as you move and stop. At least we think it does. It may seem different to you.
The reason we hesitate to call this an actual texture pack is that we changed only six image files: terrain.png and the files for chests, boats, carts and signs. And we really did apply only one filter in the Gimp to these files. It took about thirty trials to figure out which filter created the most interesting effect, but it was one filter. (The "weave" filter worked out best, though we also had to increase the TP size to 64x64 to get the effect to work.) We have noticed that people on this forum are not exactly excited about texture packs that feature the use of one filter. So call it what you will, we don't mind.
EDIT: We also don't mind if somebody else takes this and improves on it. No ownership declared.
Installation:
1. Download and install MCPatcher.
2. Download DoubleVision_64x_v1_0_0.zip.
3. Place the zip file into your minecraft texture packs folder. DO NOT UNZIP THE FILE.
4. Choose and enjoy!
EDIT: Tested in 1.1 and it works as well as it did before.
interesting idea, I might fiddle with this a bit at some point. In addition the music you have is the opening theme to Elfen Lied... sort of.
Had not heard of that. Looked it up. Yes it is the same song. Looked for freely usable music on Wikicommons. Assumed it was freely usable. It says "Source: own work". So it is somebody playing that song on something.
The original idea was just to see what it would be like to see through the blocks of Minecraft. (Do not groan, it gets better.) We soon found out about the noclip setting in Single Player Commands and the many "X-ray" texture packs, but that was not exactly what we were after. We wanted to find a way to see the foreground and background at the same time.
After much trial and error we did find something we think is interesting enough to pass on. We are still not exactly sure why this works, but with this particular pattern of partial transparency, a curious thing happens. When you stand still, the foreground visual patterns cohere and the background patterns become indistinct; your eyes can't make them into anything, so they are perceived as noise on the foreground, which alone looks real. When you move, what is below ground coheres and takes precedence over the foreground, which looks like noise.
Here is a screenshot, but bear in mind that the effect of this experiment is almost impossible to convey in a still image.
Better is this video, which shows what it looks like when you are flying over the landscape. (Please excuse the video being overdone: we were playing with all the buttons in iMovie. The audio track is from wikicommons, with some filtering in Audacity, which also has many interesting buttons.)
But even the video doesn't show the effect very well, what with lag and pixels being cut out and all. You gotta go there. It is an interesting, even surreal, visual experience. The landscape seems to expand and contract vertically as you move and stop. At least we think it does. It may seem different to you.
The reason we hesitate to call this an actual texture pack is that we changed only six image files: terrain.png and the files for chests, boats, carts and signs. And we really did apply only one filter in the Gimp to these files. It took about thirty trials to figure out which filter created the most interesting effect, but it was one filter. (The "weave" filter worked out best, though we also had to increase the TP size to 64x64 to get the effect to work.) We have noticed that people on this forum are not exactly excited about texture packs that feature the use of one filter. So call it what you will, we don't mind.
EDIT: We also don't mind if somebody else takes this and improves on it. No ownership declared.
Installation:
1. Download and install MCPatcher.
2. Download DoubleVision_64x_v1_0_0.zip.
3. Place the zip file into your minecraft texture packs folder. DO NOT UNZIP THE FILE.
4. Choose and enjoy!
EDIT: Tested in 1.1 and it works as well as it did before.
woodspeople
Yes, that could happen.
Had not heard of that. Looked it up. Yes it is the same song. Looked for freely usable music on Wikicommons. Assumed it was freely usable. It says "Source: own work". So it is somebody playing that song on something.
Fiddle away.
woodspeople