
I Am Stereoblind, But The Oculus Rift Is My Corrective Lens - jayeshsalvi
http://www.vognetwork.com/rifting-to-a-new-reality/118/I-Am-Stereoblind-But-The-Oculus-Rift-Is-My-Corrective-Lens/
======
cabacon
Super fun stuff. I have alternating esotropia
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esotropia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esotropia))
and also cannot see in stereo in normal life. 3D movies that rely on filters
or polarisation also do not work for me. I went to a supercomputing demo of a
3d visualisation company that used occlusion like Rift apparently does, and it
worked! It was really mind-bending. They were showing a visualisation of a
variable in two dimensions, so they displayed a 3d surface. (I believe this
was stuff targeted at the oil/gas industry)

My sensation was that given the size of the thing, it should not all have fit
in front of me. That is, given how far away the back was, and how large it
looked, the front of it should have been behind my head, but it wasn't. In a
later meeting with a visual specialist, we confirmed that this was typical for
people who haven't experienced 3d to feel about 3d. We also convinced
ourselves that there was no way for me to get that with just corrective
lenses.

How fun for this tech to hit the mainstream! For reference, the older tech was
based on, I believe, the CAVE stuff
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environment))

~~~
adolgert
It was relatively common in the CAVE to have someone see in stereo for the
first time. The shutter glasses have LCDs that are synchronized to flip black
and then clear, alternating eyes. The projectors are synchronized to this flip
so they show the correct projection for the correct eye. This technique
sometimes defeats eye dominance problems that impair stereoscopic vision.
Because stereoscopic vision accounts for only about 30% of our ability to
judge distance, behind occlusion and motion parallax, it was amusing but not
life changing.

~~~
cabacon
That lines up with my experience. The alternating esotropia means that at any
time one of my eyes acts as dominant, but it will change based on which
direction I look and is also under voluntary control.

I have played ultimate frisbee for years quite successfully, and people were
usually surprised when I mentioned I have no depth perception. I've met
another A.E. person who was a good softball player. The hard part is when I
have to look up at blue sky to catch something; the size difference between
"can jump to catch it and cannot" is not very big, and there are no
parallax/overlapping cues to draw on.

Interestingly, one friend said "Oh, that explains it" when he learned about my
eyes. He noticed that I never look into a cup or glass straight-on when
filling it, but instead look at it from the side so I can see how full it is.
The growth of the circle of the top-of-liquid is small enough that I will
heavily underfill a glass rather than risk spilling. As you suggest, it's not
deep life-changing stuff, but it is quite a novelty!

~~~
AaronFriel
This is _exactly_ the sensation I get with stereo vision. I was told that I'd
had a lazy eye from the age of 2 or 3. No one ever gave me details other than
that, and I always believed this shifting-dominant-eye effect was a result of
the lazy eye. It may be related, but I never found out about the effect by
researching lazy eye, aka amblyopia.

How did you come to learn about esotropia? It sounds like the doctor might
have actually diagnosed me with that, as I distinctly recall having to wear a
patch very early on in life.

Ánd finally, thanks for elucidating on the name of the condition and how
you're affected by it. It spot on describes my experience and I'm glad to know
a bit more about myself.

~~~
cabacon
The esotropia was diagnosed when I was a kid. In fact, the "visual specialist"
I visited as an adult was actually a pediatric doctor, because they're the
ones who have the most experience with esotropias. I don't have any memory of
being diagnosed with it; it happened when I was 3 or 4, I believe. My left eye
is also mildly dominant; if I'm looking straight ahead it will tend to win
control. When it was diagnosed, they did an eye surgery to correct the
tracking of the off-eye, and they tried to get me to wear glasses to further
battle against eye-dominance, though I was a reluctant participant in that
experience.

I learned the alternating esotropia name from my parents, probably during high
school or so. I don't think I was able to name it before that, and I don't
remember the context in which they shared it. Probably I was complaining about
the stereograms that were popular at the time; I have never been able to see
anything in those.

Aside from what I've mentioned so far, I also get a free bonus of driving my
wife a little crazy; she always tries to figure out which of my eyes I'm
looking out of when we're talking face-to-face. It's nice to have a bit of
novelty that is, all-in-all, not really that big of a deal. It's fun to talk
about, though, as evidenced by the popularity of this thread.

------
mistercow
If it's just a matter of exaggerating the effect, it should be relatively
simple to build low-tech glasses that do the same thing.

The cheapest, easiest proof of concept is to use mirrors and build a small
periscope (see the diagram on the left here:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Periscop...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Periscope_simple.svg)).
Hold the periscope horizontally, and look through it with one eye while
keeping the other eye open. This is effectively like moving one eye several
inches further away from the other, exaggerating the stereoscopic effect.

A more compact and practical solution could probably be built by using prisms
or specially shaped lenses over both eyes, which would halve the necessary
distance out from the center of your face. Still a little clunky, probably,
but not as much as an Oculus Rift.

~~~
gojomo
That was my thought as well. There are cheap prismatic glasses for reading or
watching TV from a prone position. (Search Amazon for [bed prism spectacles].)

Perhaps two pairs of those could be cobbled together for wearable "extreme
stereo separation" specs?

------
rosser
Like the author of TFA, I was born with amblyopia, and have a mild strabismus.
Unlike in TFA, however, the eye muscle surgery as an infant didn't correct the
problem, and my "bad" eye didn't recover or integrate. Instead, I have a
massively dominant eye, which has relatively correctable detail vision, and
another eye that can do a fair job of tracking contrast and motion, but is
utterly useless for detail; even the big "E" on the eye chart is a blur,
corrective lenses or not.

Interestingly, the retina of dominant eye has so over-compensated for the
imbalance that, the last time I had the blind-spot detection test run, the
technician had to repeat the test five times before giving up, saying she just
couldn't find my blind spot in that eye. I'm sure I have one, as
physiologically, it's not possible not to have one, but it seems to be
undetectably small.

I, too, am very interested in the Oculus Rift for trying to address this. I've
loosely followed the ongoing research involving using stereo Tetris (the
falling pieces are presented to one eye, and the settled pieces to the other)
to train the eyes and visual cortex to work together better. It's demonstrated
a reasonable level of success, so far.

~~~
dtf
I had eye muscle surgery when I was younger, and while I enjoyed stereopsis
for a brief period afterwards, it soon disappeared. I bought an Oculus DK
partly with the thought of trying to code up various eye exercises.

I read somewhere about a Tetris game where the fixed blocks are in one eye and
the falling block in another, forcing you to integrate both fields. I really
have no idea if this will help, but I think it would be fun to try.

------
com2kid
Unfortunately this won't help me, 20/200 corrected in one eye, 20/20 in the
other. :( In addition to that, the focal depth of my eyes is just a bit off as
well (hah apparently the lens in my blind eye is actually better! Go figure).

Still awaiting optical nerve regeneration tech.

The flip side of this is how bitter (and a bit fearful I am) of 3D tech taking
over. I worry that it'll become required for user interface interaction at
some point in the future, and that I'll be SOL.

~~~
pshc
You could use two different eyecups (containing different lenses) for each eye
in the Rift. Could work if they happen to provide just the right kind of lens.

Maybe differing focal depth could be dealt with in software? When you use the
Rift, your eyes are focused at infinity.

~~~
com2kid
The key problem is that one of my eyes is next to useless. If I close my
dominant eye, my other eye (corrected!) can pretty much see that there is an
orange bar at the top, some sort of tanish area, some black stuff that is
texty, and a white box below it that has texty stuff in it. On the infamous
eye exam chart, I can barely make out the top most letter.

One one hand it is sort of nifty, it is almost like a holographic degradation
of quality, it'd be more interesting though if it wasn't happening to me!

Oddly enough I found out that the problem I have (underdeveloped optic nerve)
often co-occurs with grip strength problems. After an Amazon order and a week
of training my grip, my life long problem of dropping things has been
resolved. (Cost me $2k for the neuropsych eval to figure this out, but not
dropping stuff all the time is a huge confidence booster, so I am A-OK with
the trade off!)

Anyway, hopefully nerve regeneration takes off, I'd love to be able to see
properly. (Not to mention all the other problems it'd solve for people!)

------
ChuckMcM
I was wondering if you could build a welder's helmet where the camera outside
the helmet showed you what you were working on and attenutated the bright
bead.

~~~
twiceaday
[http://www.tested.com/tech/443147-1000000-1-contrast-
ratio-c...](http://www.tested.com/tech/443147-1000000-1-contrast-ratio-
cameras-help-welding-hood-augment-reality/)

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is awesome! I love it when I invent cool stuff :-)

------
kafkaesque
I had pretty severe strabismus at birth and also had muscle surgery shortly
after. I was born in a developing country and the details of my condition at
birth are nebulous, partly out of the ignorance of my guardians,
understandably. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the surgery was done to ameliorate
some amblyopia, because in North America, the ophthalmologist said wearing
eyeglasses were useless that whole time (I'd been wearing them since an
infant, basically). After that I had another surgery as a child and again as a
teen.

Anyway, I also have what I like to describe as an underdeveloped stereoscopic
vision. I can't see 3D movies either. Basically, my condition fits the OP's
description.

When I tried out the Nintendo 3DS I also could not see it well, but I moved it
at angles and kind of, barely could. However, I had to stop a few minutes
later because it was giving me a massive headache (migraine-like).

I'm interested in Oculus Rift. I'll give it a whirl but I'm afraid it will
induce that same head pain.

Has anyone with a similar condition experienced headaches in a similar
situation?

------
mkehrt
I wear contacts, and sometimes, if one of my eyes is irritated, I only wear
one. It takes about half an hour for my brain to adjust to using only one eye
(my vision is bad enough that I essentially cannot use an eye without a
contact).

It amazes me that after this happens, I stop noticing the problem. I don't
realize that I can't see in 3D up close[1]. Then, I will attempt to do
something that requires stereo vision, and _I will just fail_. I've missed
card swipes by about a foot, without being able to tell it was a problem until
it happened. I once got a bunch of friends to cover one eye and try to swipe a
card, and they had similar experiences, not noticing they were going to fail
until the did.

[1] Stereo vision only works within a few feet of your eyes. Further out, you
use other cues to construct a 3D model of what you are seeing.

------
mrchucklepants
As one who is also stereo blind, this makes me really want to try the Oculus
Rift.

~~~
leviathant
I'm stereoblind[1], and had the chance to try out an Oculus Rift a few weeks
ago. It's neat, but it's more like a viewmaster or a 3d film than it is
"Seeing actual depth." The Rift was pretty cool, even as low-fi as it was. And
experiencing simulation sickness, while pretty unpleasant, was also kind of
wild. (Stick to simulations that put you in vehicles - avoid Half-Life 2)

Here comes the footnote:

[1] I only really discovered that I was stereoblind in 2006 (age 26), with the
release of the album "10,000 Days" by Tool, which comes in stereo-optical
packaging. Folks online were raving about the three dimensional artwork
packaging, but for me, I had trouble seeing it. Whereas it seems people with
normal vision can see the depth right away, it took me minutes of staring
through the lenses in the packaging to see the depth of the (admittedly
cheesy) artwork and photography.

I spent at least an hour going through that, and when I looked away, I had
kind of a Wizard of Oz Color Television moment. I could see depth. Like, holy
shit, I can see depth. I remember I just stared at a crumpled plastic bag on
the floor.

The effect wore off, although sometimes manifested itself in odd places -
particularly in an antique mirror we had kicking around. Looking in the
mirror, I could see depth again. When I'm looking at vast expanses - a side-
of-the-road scenic view off an Arizona highway - I can muster 'depth' again.

I later heard a report on NPR about how in some cases, depth perception can be
re-learned, despite contemporary theories that if you don't learn depth
perception by age eight (or so), the neural pathways will never form. In the
radio program, the doctor exploring this gave his patients a string lined with
beads several inches apart. Tie the string next to your bed, attached to the
wall, for example. When you are going to or getting up from bed, pick up that
string and hold it taught, and focus for x seconds/minutes on each bead.

Or get a copy of 10,000 Days by Tool and stare at it for an hour or two.

It really blew my mind, seeing actual depth in full clarity that first time.
Upon further reflection, it made sense to me that my stereoblindness was why I
was terrible at a sport like baseball, but not so bad at soccer, and why with
first person shooters, I excelled where others instead got motion sickness. I
can see with both eyes, but it's like my brain is using a less efficient
algorithm to translate the signals into X/Y/Z. With large, far away things,
it's easy. With a small object moving quickly in my direction, not so much.

~~~
ChuckMcM
One of the things to look into are eyes that are grossly disproportionate
(like your prescription varies strongly from one eye to the other) When I was
young I had a 'wandering eye' which was corrected surgically, but that left me
with such a disparity in capability and a diminished depth perception.

~~~
chaosphere2112
Suddenly, I'm very glad that I got into the eye doctor as early as I did; my
right eye is _dramatically_ worse than my left, but I guess that I got glasses
early enough to prevent something like this from happening.

------
D9u
As a result of a failure to wear proper eye protection (sweating makes it
harder to see properly through glasses/goggles, so I neglected to follow SOP)
I incurred a traumatic injury to one eye - detached retina + bad patient +
lensectomy = blind eye.

At first (7+ years ago) I had trouble walking on uneven terrain, and I still
have trouble catching a ball or objects tossed to me. Now I've grown
accustomed to my sight impairment, but would welcome a way to see normally
again.

I'm wondering if this will help people with similar monocular vision to see
with depth perception?

~~~
gojomo
The effect described here seems to help (temporarily, situationally)
reactivate the latent depth-perception of people who still have binocular
vision. For monocular vision, some other strategy would be necessary... but
active systems would seem to make it possible.

Do you get any enjoyment/benefit out of these sort of "wiggle" stereograms:

[http://izismile.com/2010/05/07/cool_stereoscopic_animated_gi...](http://izismile.com/2010/05/07/cool_stereoscopic_animated_gifs_30_gifs.html)

...?

Perhaps alternating-cameras-plus-LCD, or simply vibrating/rotating prism,
could give those with monocular vision a depth effect.

(Similarly, some lenses that oscillate focus or depth-of-vision, across a
small range, might help accentuate natural depth cues in monocular vision?)

~~~
alanctgardner2
Someone above pointed out that parallax effects contribute a significant
amount to perception of depth. I can imagine that someone with monocular
vision would be able to use parallax effects, and consequently the wiggle
stereograms. Wiggling with a VR headset sounds really difficult... you could
actually test it with a normal monitor and a hacked up 3D engine if you were
feeling daring.

------
Timothee
I too had pretty bad strabismus when I was born and had an operation to
correct it around 3yo, but have never been able to see in 3D, except for 3D
movies where the effect is important. I have never been able to see a
stereogram for example (and there was a huge fad of them when I was a
teenager). As soon as I try to focus beyond the image as I was told many
times, my left eye wanders off and nothing happens.

He describes exactly how I see: I see from one eye at a time while the other
gives peripheral vision and I can usually switch between them at will. And I
just caught myself with the face turned a bit sideways while reading his post,
like he's describing as well.

What this thread shows me is that being stereoblind is not uncommon, but I
feel that somehow it's not discussed or really considered as a handicap of
sorts. Some people don't even know they are until their late twenties! You get
tested for color-blindness early and often, as well as just plain vision, but
somehow stereovision is either not tested or tested and the answer is often
"well there's not much you can do". (granted, a lot of people are unaware
they're color-blinded too, despite the tests)

I have always been bad at sports and it's obvious that this has played a role
in it, so it leaves me a bit bitter because it was never something that was
taken into account into me being bad. I was just bad.

I'm glad I came across this post. I'll definitely checkout
[http://www.stereosue.com/…](http://www.stereosue.com/…)

------
JofArnold
If any is interested, you can buy thin plastic prism to put over your glasses
to bend the light to compensate for a lazy eye. Unfortunately they affect the
quality of the image so are of limit benefit.

I've only seen 3D three times in my life; parts of Avatar, parts of a 3D demo
and once when working on a telerobitcs project a accidentally bumped one of
the robots cameras out of position.

Loving every comment here in HN. Maybe we should start a Reddit for 3D vision
hacking?

~~~
arnarbi
The falling ash in Avatar was also first time I saw 3D (at 28). Now I'm
considering another surgery to correct my eyes, as I'm convinced the
stereoscopic circuitry is all there in my brain, counter to what doctors
claim.

Let me know if you start that reddit.

~~~
vagabundo
[http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dhacking/](http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dhacking/)

------
bchjam
I was thinking about the Oculus for physical therapy type applications just
the other week (I have meniere's disease, I get prescribed all manner of
vestibular PT involving eye movements). So happy to see that I'm not the only
one realizing the potential applications behind gaming for fun that these
sorts of interfaces provide!

------
kevingadd
I've got partial stereoblindness so reading this has me more interested in
owning an Oculus Rift than I've ever been. I'm not super interested in
augmented reality or VR, but it was pretty surprising to discover that using a
3DS (once you get past the awful low resolution and need to hold it in
_juuuust_ the right spot) partially circumvented my problems perceiving depth.

It's neat to hear that the Oculus crew are thinking about how this technology
could be used to help people with stereo vision problems, instead of just
purely the entertainment uses. Even partial impairment of your stereo vision
can have kind of unfortunate consequences - virtually all sports are
incredibly frustrating, driving is very stressful, etc.

------
lefrancaiz
Interesting. I'm stereoblind as well. I wonder if it would work for me as
well. I've had moments during 3d movies where I think i'm seeing 3d, but not
sure if it's only due to much larger screen that imax movies are generally
shown on. It usually happens on sparks or rain or things that are really
flying towards you and i'm wondering if that's similar to what you describe as
'instances where the parallax is very large'.

I may have to get an Oculus rift and try the same demo. It would be really
amazing to be able to develop some learning tools for people to retrain the
part of the brain responsible for stereovision.

------
dorfsmay
This is fascinating. I have the same issue, althoug not as extensive, and was
told that if you haven't seen in stereo by age 4, you never will, because the
brain paths died off. I guess this is a proof that it isn't the case.

------
gales
Can the Oculus Rift driver nudge the screen output? I have an alternating
squint, but can use both eyes if I focus on my finger. With screens re-
aligned, I'm hoping that I might be able to see in 3D.

------
robomartin
This is one of the reasons I read HN every day. So much to learn.

One of my kids has strabismus. He had surgery when he was seven. My wife
wanted him to have surgery earlier (2 to 3). It took five years to convince me
that the idea made any sense. It didn't. Not to me. As an engineer I saw this
as a control problem, not a mechanical problem. Doctors (as in PhD's) at UCLA
insisted that these conditions are caused by weak or strong muscled. I called
bullshit (as in, to their face). I found them condescending and barbaric in
their approach. Kid after kid goes through these bullshit surgeries for no
good reason. Well, maybe not, it's easy money as evidenced by the pressure my
wife put on me to go along.

At the time I devoted considerable time to building various contraptions to
try and see if I could figure out a way to re-train my son to converge his
eyes. The most elaborate of these rigs was a goggle with cameras, LCD shutters
and 50% mirrors. I could use the LCD shutters to occlude each eye individually
from a remote control panel or dim each eye. The 50% mirrors allowed me to use
the cameras to watch his eyes and measure position.

With this device in hand I would sit him in front of the TV or Playstation and
put on his favorite cartoon or game. I'd sit there and gently try to get him
to either switch eyes or encourage him to use both eyes. I could dim the
"good" eye to force the other eye to come over and help. Or I could simply
occlude it and force a switch. I got some results but I couldn't find much out
there to guide me. Nobody wanted to talk to me. As I said, the PhD butchers at
UCLA were only interested in surgery. I studied books [0] and articles on the
subject and all I got was condescension and a refusal to even approach a
discussion. I worked with advanced hardware and software technologies during
my day job but somehow was not worthy of their attention. Talk about feeling
small.

I finally reached a painful conclusion: The problem with these conditions is
that small children (2 to 5+) are incredibly difficult to work with. The
concept of having such a small child spend an hour doing very difficult eye
work is, well, utopia at best. Therefore, they become victims of a research
community that doesn't seem interested in addressing the real problem and,
instead, clings to a good sales tool "tight muscles" or "weak muscles" and
cuts away.

Through this thread I learned a number of interesting things and now am
hopeful to return to some of my ideas, perhaps with a different twist. I also
learned of Stereo Sue
([http://www.stereosue.com/](http://www.stereosue.com/)). Crap, I cried while
watching her TedX video. Few things can touch someone more than something that
can potentially change your kid's life. Wow.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Models-Oculomotor-Control-George-
Hung/...](http://www.amazon.com/Models-Oculomotor-Control-George-
Hung/dp/9810245688)

------
vagabundo
I created a reddit for this subject:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dhacking/](http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dhacking/)

------
ctdonath
John Carmack today tweets: _An HMD with one eye covered is a video projector
in a dark room._

Is there some happening which prompted this thread and that tweet?

~~~
pshc
He's likely talking about the Oculus Latency Tester (it covers up one of the
eyes), it's unrelated.

------
jchung
Geordi, is that you?

