

This App Trains You to See Farther - brendanlim
http://www.popularmechanics.com/_mobile/science/health/med-tech/this-app-trains-you-to-see-farther-16506910

======
13throwaway
Open source javascript clone.
[https://rawgithub.com/Fordi/eyegame/master/eyes.html](https://rawgithub.com/Fordi/eyegame/master/eyes.html)

~~~
eliasmacpherson
what are the instructions?

~~~
piyush_soni
I pressed F11 to go to full screen. The message didn't change. Anyway, I saw a
circle pointer and spots on the screen so I started clicking them one by one
and they got 'cleaned'. Finally, I removed all the spots that I could see.
Nothing happened after that. No message.

------
staunch
> " _When a major league baseball pitcher throws a 95-mph fastball, only about
> 400 milliseconds—the duration of a blink—pass before the ball rockets over
> the plate. And a batter gets less than half that time to decide whether to
> swing, and where. Baseball "_

Bah! That's not a knife. This is a knife: twitch FPS gaming. Quake Live at 250
FPS, refreshed at 144hz, with < 5ms RTT latency. Reaction times can be
compared in almost individual milliseconds. I'll put the reaction times of the
best Quake Live player (rapha/cypher/evil, whoever) against the best baseball
player _any day_.

Interestingly, my vision is extremely good. I've often surprised people with
how far I can see clearly. So screw this app: learn how to play a twitch FPS
well: [http://www.quakelive.com/](http://www.quakelive.com/)

~~~
cjensen
You would lose the bet :-)

Keep in mind that the ball is coming straight on, and the batter must discern
trajectory (rising, falling) and spin (which affects how the ball curves) and
velocity quickly enough that you still have time to move the bat.

For example, a fastball and a changeup both drop at the same rate and spin at
the same rate. One is coming at 100mph, the other at 75. Since the ball is
heading straight for you, you must perceive speed by measuring how quickly the
ball is moving through your eye focus.

Worse, you are expected to bat in an intentional direction. Meaning that you
have to hit the ball on an precise spot in the sphere with an intentional
amount of force. It's not enough to just swing hard. I'd guess the bat has to
be in the right location with a time accuracy of less than a millisecond.

The good batters make good money for a reason.

~~~
rschmitty
A ball that is going to a predetermined area while you stand still...

Hitting a headshot of another player that can go in any direction / velocity
while you yourself are traveling in any direction velocity all _before_ that
player kills you can be very challenging and depend on very high skill and
reaction times

The amount of money a player makes compared to someone in another sport has no
bearing.

------
maxerickson
The article author and also the researcher showed up on reddit:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1y9m6w/a_neuroscien...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1y9m6w/a_neuroscientist_has_just_developed_an_app_that/)

~~~
wherkewitz
Hey that's me. I'm new to Ycombinator but I'll answer questions here too!

~~~
hrkristian
Welcome!

When might we be so lucky as to see an Android or Linux version? or better
yet, a platform agnostic web based app?

------
gcanyon
For anyone wondering about the (bad) ratings in the iOS App Store: I bought
this yesterday for an iPad mini.

I think the app must use web-based resources, and their site was slammed
yesterday. I could do nothing but give it my name, and then it would go to a
black screen and sit there -- no feedback, no activity, for minutes. I was
left thinking I had wasted my money.

Today the app loads and runs successfully. The interface is bad. Really bad.
Text-overlapping-other-text-and-graphics bad.

The controls are iffy. You're supposed to tap various images but sometimes the
taps are off by an inch or more.

Nevertheless, it seemed to do pretty much what it is supposed to. It concluded
my first session, congratulated me, and died. I checked and it saved my
progress, so there's that.

I'm not totally put out since I got to do the exercises, and it seems
plausible that it might help my mediocre vision. I hope the usability, design,
and load issues are fixed soon.

~~~
eru
Otherwise, someone else will probably clone it better.

------
crazygringo
Ugh, their website doesn't even explain what platforms it works on. Their home
page, about page, and FAQ don't mention it at all.

Their purchase page has mysterious Apple and Windows icons, with a message
saying "Is Now Available on the iPad".

But is there a Windows version, which the Windows icon would suggest? Or is it
Windows Phone? OSX version? Web version? It says "Available on the App Store",
but on my iPhone I can't find it.

And if it's _only_ available for iPad, it doesn't even make sense that the
site has a purchase page.

[http://ultimeyesvision.com/purchase.php](http://ultimeyesvision.com/purchase.php)

~~~
mkl
Yes, the website is pretty terrible. An OSX version seems to exist, since they
used a Mac Mini in their research. More info I've found:

\- video interview with researchers Seitz, Deveau and Ozer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKbbF66cyqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKbbF66cyqI)

\- short published article on the baseball study:
[https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(14)...](https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(14\)00005-0?large_figure=true)

\- lots more technical info about the app and the study (supplemental data to
above article): [http://download.cell.com/current-
biology/mmcs/journals/0960-...](http://download.cell.com/current-
biology/mmcs/journals/0960-9822/PIIS0960982214000050.mmc1.pdf)

------
devindotcom
This kind of reminds of playing _Tribes_ in the early days. I was a sniper and
would hang out in the mountains, monitoring miles of terrain and waiting for
the slightest pixel of movement so I could zoom in to the max and nail it with
the laser gun. That game definitely improved my visual responsivity and
awareness, if not my actual acuity.

~~~
NDizzle
Yep. My time spent playing Delta Force 1 paid off in Tribes. (More so in
Tribes 2 - too bad nobody played that one!)

------
piyush_soni
A user on reddit quickly came up with a free Web, Android, Windows exe, and a
mac app for this. Hackers of this world, I tell you. :)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1y9m6w/a_neuroscien...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1y9m6w/a_neuroscientist_has_just_developed_an_app_that/cfiwf7p)

------
donuon
Neurobonkers sums it up quite well, "Until I've seen a replication with a
randomised, double blind, placebo control group, I for one will be keeping my
$5.99 firmly in my wallet."

[http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/the-app-that-trains-you-
to-...](http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/the-app-that-trains-you-to-see-
farther-or-does-it)

------
cjensen
It's an interesting effect, if it exists.

A researcher charging money for an app based on an effect which he has not
finished studying -- no blind study yet -- is a really... odd... thing to do
in my opinion. Were it me, I wouldn't charge before the blind study is done.

~~~
eru
Why? Charge as soon as you can make money. Minimum viable product and all
that.

------
oakwhiz
The image that they show reminds me of the way that the 2D discrete cosine
transform works.

[http://openi.nlm.nih.gov/imgs/512/312/2680596/2680596_pone.0...](http://openi.nlm.nih.gov/imgs/512/312/2680596/2680596_pone.0005594.g002.png)

It looks similar to this:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Dctjpeg....](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Dctjpeg.png)

~~~
mistercow
It's called a "Gabor patch", and it's constructed by multiplying a 1D sine
wave by a 2D gaussian window (it's the sine wave that's reminding you of the
basis functions of the 2D DCT).

You'll see these all over the place if you read studies about vision. The
(highly oversimplified) reason is that if you imagine the edge-detection
processes of a mammalian brain as a set of filters, the impulse response of
one of those filters would be a Gabor patch.

This is related to why the DCT is so effective for vision applications,
although perhaps less significantly than you might imagine just by looking at
the patterns.

~~~
TTPrograms
Even more closely related would be a wavelet transform with windowed sine
packet wavelets.

------
alisson
This is cool! I being training my eyes using yoga exercises for about 2 months
and I can really few the improvements by now. I'll test this app to see if it
helps.

Somethings we get in front of a computer too much and your eyes begin to loose
the ability to see things farther. It's all about training the muscles.

~~~
mhb
What sort of yoga exercises work for your eyes?

~~~
alisson
Here's a video of someone teaching them:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRwXuRIR3Co](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRwXuRIR3Co)

At 4m10s she shows the one I'm practicing the most now, training to focus. I
like to do it one eye at a time, and then both. I don't aways use the thumb, I
like to go to a park and do it between trees, when I'm on a bus I do it
between the window's borders (because it's not transparent) and things out
side.

Blink is very important to, try to remember to blink, so it's always
lubricated enough. I tend to blink less when I'm on a computer, it's something
I'm trying to work on.

I'll give it a few more months to see how it reflects on the eye doctor exam.

------
MaysonL
On the app store: 11 5 star, 2 4 star, 5 3 star, 1 2 star, aaaaand 173 1 start
ratings. Seems like possibly a server-overload problem.

------
Houshalter
Off topic but I posted this yesterday
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7261606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7261606)).
I didn't think you could repost articles (or at least it hasn't let me do it
in the past.)

~~~
privong
Your submittion and this one link to different URLs (mobile vs non-mobile
site), so to the HN system they're different articles.

~~~
privong
s/submittion/submission/ rough day for me, spelling-wise!

------
irq
Here's a link to the app on the iOS App Store. Seems to be iPad-only at the
moment.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ultimeyes/id805408944?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ultimeyes/id805408944?mt=8)

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TheSOB888
Eyes feel blurry after playing this game. Uncomfortable. Want to go to bed.

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kyberias
I find it slightly irritating and frustrating that there's a patent pending
and there isn't even a demo available.

------
caw
There's another app called "GlassesOff" that seems to do the same thing.

~~~
ericxb
GlassesOff is used to improve near vision.

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triberian
Question. Can it be played with lenses on? I found no recommendation for or
without!

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dorfsmay
Is this an IOS only apps only? Can't find it on android.

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beautybasics
Misleading title. \- It trains to respond fastly

~~~
mistercow
The article specifically says that it allowed players to read lines further
down on the eye chart.

