Is the technique to this exactly the same as the technique to view a 3d stereogram image?
I was able to get a 3rd image to be clearly visible in the middle doing this, on the 2nd image I could definitely seem some spots appear that lead me straight to 3 of them but didn't work for me on the other 2 images.
The left-right full-image stereograms... but those are less common than the pattern-based "magic eye" stereograms. Those are the reverse of this - in the linked image and the left-right full-image stereograms, they're done by crossing your eyes to a point closer to your eyes than the original image.
The pattern-based "magic eye" stereograms are done by looking through the image to focus on a point deeper into the screen further from your eyes.
The latter I think are less painful because they use the more natural depth-perception distances of your eyes instead of using what feels like more unnatural positions, but that might be my bias because I'm a bit farsighted. Maybe they're just more common because they're visually inscrutable at first and so you get the "reveal" of the 3D contour from a single large image instead of two already-visible small ones.
I was able to get a 3rd image to be clearly visible in the middle doing this, on the 2nd image I could definitely seem some spots appear that lead me straight to 3 of them but didn't work for me on the other 2 images.