Show HN: Eyeball

(eyeball.rory.codes)

285 points | by mrroryflint 2 days ago

59 comments

  • MontyCarloHall 2 days ago
    A modern take on Matthias Wandel's classic [0], which has you guess a variety of geometric attributes (e.g. angle bisection, centroid locating, shape regularization), not just simple partitioning of a line.

    [0] https://woodgears.ca/eyeball/index.html

    • kerblang 2 days ago
      Oh that version actually made sense.

      Going back to our newer game, I realized that I am supposed to figure out where the number given should fall on the line.

      A case study in modern useability - looks a lot cooler, can't figure it out.

      • imzadi 2 days ago
        idk, it only took me one click to figure out what the goal was and how I was being judged (beat the average). I feel like that's part of the puzzle. Sort of similar to Baba is You. Figuring out the goal is part of the puzzle.
    • mrroryflint 2 days ago
      Oh wow - that is very cool. Thanks for sharing.
      • harrisi 2 days ago
        Just want to say thank you for sharing your project. Very fun, and I wouldn't know about Matthias Wandel's version if not for yours!

        Also, both of these tickled my brain in a great way. I think a potentially fun continuation would be to "eyeball" physics. For example, throw a ball and pause the physics before it hits something (ground, object, who knows?) and guess the location. Or show two objects about to collide with certain shapes and masses and guess what one of them will hit first and where.

    • stronglikedan 2 days ago
      This is great. If only the little square tool would disappear while I make adjustments though - it's just enough of a distraction to barely miss.
  • forlorn_mammoth 2 days ago
    Love it!

    It would be great to have a 'training' mode, where you get to repeat ones you miss. This would increase the learning speed.

    Easy training- repeat the one you just borked Medium training- cycles through say 5 examples until you get all five within your target range (1%, 0.1%, whatever)

    • mrroryflint 2 days ago
      Cool idea - thanks! I'm building a mobile app as we speak so I'll add it for sure.
  • sandebert 2 days ago
    Got a perfect result for the first try. (Off by zero.) Not trying again. :)
    • senectus1 1 day ago
      yeah i got an off by 1 and decided that was good enough :-D
  • davidcollantes 2 days ago
    I was 0.06% off on eyeball. Beat me: https://eyeball.rory.codes.

    This is fun!

    • pelagicAustral 2 days ago
      > perfect - you picked 0 · off by 1 (0.03%)
    • Theodores 2 days ago
      Almost: 0.07%, allegedly 'perfect'. Getting an early win makes the game so much more 'playable'.
      • stavros 2 days ago
        Why does an early win matter? Isn't it random?
    • layer8 2 days ago
      0.10%, but on a touch screen.
  • harrisi 2 days ago
    It's interesting that there are, at the time I'm commenting, 11 new users commenting on this submission, some commenting multiple times. I wonder what the effect of "share my score" type pages have on account creation.
    • hazelnut 2 days ago
      yes, was thinking the same. but it's also weird that the amount of new users commenting is so much higher here. wonder if that is just not a coincidence.
      • harrisi 2 days ago
        It is odd. There's significantly more new users commenting here than every other submission on the front page, both in absolute numbers and proportionally.

        ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • mavdol04 1 day ago
    It's a bit of a cheat, but you can hit 0.00% every time. Just measure the bar length, then cross-multiply. :)

    Example: bar is 1250px, max is 2100, number is 376 → (1250 × 376) / 2100 ≈ 223.8px from the start, that's the 0.00%.

  • zer0tonin 2 days ago
    This is fun but you need to put "click the line" higher on the page. It took me a while to figure out what I was looking at.
    • oneeyedpigeon 2 days ago
      Just any kind of contrast between foreground and background would help.
    • ketul_shah 2 days ago
      same happened to myself as well.
  • sentacraft 8 hours ago
    This is fun! and I really love the clean and modern UX.
  • SugarReflex 20 hours ago
    I thought this was a random guessing game and kept randomly clicking and felt very frustrated. Once I realized how it works with the two numbers, estimating felt a lot more rewarding.
  • densekernel 2 days ago
    https://eyeball.rory.codes/ I was 0.20% off on eyeball. Beat me: https://eyeball.rory.codes
  • 0xchamin 9 hours ago
    cool game. I tried. would be nice to include a helper description around what to do. took me a while to understand the challenge better.
  • efilife 1 hour ago
    very weird comments from very fresh accounts under this post
  • Kwouz 12 hours ago
    Its cool man, i was playing for 1 hour, havent won yet
  • throwawaydudhdn 2 days ago
    Great idea! Have you considered storing triplets <range, correct number, selected number> for each try and making image plots of these (x/y coordinates are correct/selected numbers, color of each pixel represents frequency) for multiple users for each range? I think the image might reveal interesting properties of human eyeballing, like near-perfect accuracy around 50%, but with less obvious correlations.
    • mrroryflint 2 days ago
      Very cool idea! Will try and add.
  • layer8 2 days ago
    The fact that the numbers are in a brighter color than the end marks, and that the numbers go inwards, makes it slightly more difficult than it would otherwise be, because the eye is biased by the more prominent space between the numbers being different from the line between the marks.
  • Lucas12546 10 hours ago
    I got 0.03%. I try my best.
  • pedromlsreis 2 days ago
    0.11% by luck, because I actually got lucky the target number was too close to zero, out of a big scale.
  • ashm1104 2 days ago
    I love these kind ones! Really engaging also yes as someone commented, the training mode would be an awesome idea.

    Also, I tried this on laptop as well as my phone, I liked it more on my phone (I know the whole point is about precision though)

    • mrroryflint 2 days ago
      I'm* building an app currently!

      *my old pal Claude

  • obomeretic 1 day ago
    I was 0.67% off on eyeball. Beat me: https://eyeball.rory.codes
  • furyofantares 2 days ago
    I find it very easy if it's near 50%, 10%, or 5%.

    Presumably I'd do just as well visually near 90 and 95 as near 10 and 5, the difference is in the first stage, estimating the percentage.

  • ninju 2 days ago
    Note the "share" link doesn't share a specific challenge for others to try, which would be much cooler, instead it just shares to main page
  • joey9prints 2 days ago
    Cool idea, love how simple it is. Minimal and clean.
  • gverrilla 2 days ago
    Suggestion: make timed tracks - like a sequence of 10 turns, within max 60/30/15s or something.
  • fortran77 2 days ago
    I got a perfect "off by 4" on the first try! I feel like I've accomplished something!
  • Mabusto 2 days ago
    I love these simple games that take 2 seconds to understand the rules.

    Off by 6 on my iPad by mis-clicking. Very satisfying!

  • RAZKOM 2 days ago
    I thought I was going to be really good at this but turns out I'm surprisingly bad. Cool idea.
  • schuhwerk 2 days ago
    Nice! Would be nice to see your progress over time (if you got better, also as a function of speed...)
  • FinanceFreddy 2 days ago
    Oh, this is actually fun! How about if you change the target every few seconds to add a bit of pressure.
  • zokier 2 days ago
    10 round avg 4.5%.

    A time limit would make sense imho. For extra challenge, add diagonal or curved lines.

  • tartoran 2 days ago
    Fun. Got a streak of 4 and one of them was perfect (nearly .10% of target).
  • ketul_shah 2 days ago
    this is fun and helping me get grounded :). adding a timer would be a good idea, I think.
  • p2hari 2 days ago
    My best on first attempt was 0.00% (Pure coincidence) . But was fun!
  • 0x000xca0xfe 2 days ago
    10 perfect hits in a row!

    ...

    handleClick({clientX: els.bar.getBoundingClientRect().left + els.bar.getBoundingClientRect().width / state.n * state.target })

  • wolttam 2 days ago
    The low contrast of this website hurts my eyeball
  • baisampayans 2 days ago
    This is wild. Got hooked into it pretty fast
  • ramon156 2 days ago
    800

    0 out of 1,600

    I still missed. Even when there was centered text.

    Maybe the human is the weakest link

  • untitled-now 1 day ago
    I am amazed how such a simple app gets that much attention , whereas probably it is vibe coded in an hour using Claude or any other AI tool .
    • mrroryflint 1 day ago
      I think first prompt to deploy was < 25 minutes - purely to amuse myself.

      I have so many other projects that have taken days and in my eyes are way "better" but get zero attention.

  • shashankqv 2 days ago
    This is very cool and fun. Thank you.
  • lbeyer 2 days ago
    Simple premise, oddly hard to put down.
  • ehsangazarr 2 days ago
    Really fun! I am pretty much blind
  • Chaseraph 2 days ago
    Well I suck.
    • mrroryflint 2 days ago
      I built it and still suck, don’t feel so bad.
  • fspoettel 2 days ago
    Would love a time trial mode
  • dennis3124 1 day ago
    Love how simple it is.
  • jjenks1106 1 day ago
    really cool! enjoy the simple premise but very satisfying
  • antoine-codefly 2 days ago
    Definitely need an iOS version! An angle version on a circle would be nice too.
    • tantalor 2 days ago
      What does native give you that this doesn't?
      • perilunar 1 day ago
        Several megabytes downloaded instead of (checks dev tools) 5.1 KB.
    • mrroryflint 2 days ago
      Just wrapping up the beta for iOS! Will let you know asap.
  • thedetailsguy 2 days ago
    Super cool stuff!
  • Hugsbox 2 days ago
    I didn't think I'd be any good at this. What I didn't expect is how wildly inaccurate I'd be on every single goddamn attempt lmao it's like I completely lack whatever part of your brain is required to do this
  • oastp 2 days ago
    love it, pulls you in after a first try)
  • iJohnDoe 1 day ago
    This seems like a nice therapeutic application. Something a person or practitioner could say, “Sit down and play this for 5 minutes to calm your mind.”
  • datagrasp-grcs 2 days ago
    Very cool
  • cdelsolar 2 days ago
    i got a 0.00% after 3 tries!
  • trickybusiness 2 days ago
    this is fun!
  • nextma 2 days ago
    my best is 0.08%
  • tt_dev 2 days ago
    this was fun
  • ehsangazarr 2 days ago
    pretty fun!
  • elliotJames548 2 days ago
    i made 0.87%
  • aspectop 2 days ago
    my avg was around 2% not able to do more than that lol
  • GearDev7532 2 days ago
    [dead]