Hi,

This copied from a post to Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4o3ipv/my_first_experience_with_vive_as_a_visually/

“Two weeks ago I experienced virtual reality for the first time, and I wanted to share with you my first experience with the Vive (a brand of VR headset).

“I should start by saying that I’m severely visually impaired, to the extent of being ‘registered blind’, with an eye condition known as retinitis pigmentosa. I also suffer from an amblyopia and diplopia. So you don’t have to Google what all those words mean, I’m incredibly short sighted, have decreased peripheral vision, I struggle to see in the dark, and I have no sense of depth as I constantly see separate images from each eye, so the world around me is flat, as well as weirdly doubled….

“So when I went to try the Vive experience at the London Curry’s PC World, I was fearing the worst, admittedly to the point of shaking. I had this horrible feeling in my gut, worried that it wasn’t going to work for me, anticipating that same sinking feeling I got when I tried the Wii, Kinect, 3DS or went to a 3D movie for the first time and couldn’t experience it the same way others did. I didn’t want to be left out of yet another generation of technology. Still, I put on a brave face, and pulled the headset over my eyes.

“Depth.

“I was inside a large circular room, with a screen mounted on a plinth in the centre, which seemed to be some sort of demo suite. The host from HTC was there on voice guiding me through the experience, and came over to hand me the controllers. Thing is, I had the headset on, so I couldn’t see her. But I could see the controllers, and it wasn’t like looking at a screen, the controllers were… were actually there, I could reach out and know exactly how far to reach out, without thinking, to take them. Even without having my hands represented in front of me, I could tell how far away the controllers were from me, their size and shape, everything. This is something I’m missing with my actual sight.

“She then told me to press a button on them, and suddenly a balloon inflates in front of me startling me beyond belief. I let go, and it starts floating. I’m then told to try hitting it up into the air, and I do so knowing how far to reach, and it reacts just as I would expect a real balloon would. By now I’m astonished with my mouth hanging open in shock. Things don’t look flat, I’m perceiving everything in terms of their size and shape, and as I watch the balloon float away I can tell it’s big and round, and that it exists to me and I can see exactly how far away it is from where I’m stood.

“I was experiencing depth for the very first time in my life.

“It’s very difficult to explain how this feels, because it’s something almost everyone has by default. I spend most of my time guessing how far things are away from me using shadows, or how far the side of something goes in comparison to things around it. A lot of guessing, basically. (and a lot of head injuries)”

_____________________________________________________________________________

Why was this person able to see so much better, particularly in terms of depth perception, with the VR headset than she normally can?

I would question this. If you have never had depth perception you simply don’t know what it is. The wiring is not there.

buffy said:

I would question this. If you have never had depth perception you simply don’t know what it is. The wiring is not there.

maybe depth perception is obtained through other means, awareness of things around you,

CrazyNeutrino said:

buffy said:

I would question this. If you have never had depth perception you simply don’t know what it is. The wiring is not there.

maybe depth perception is obtained through other means, awareness of things around you,

hearing can offer depth perception, of sounds of cars coming and going etc

CrazyNeutrino said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

buffy said:

I would question this. If you have never had depth perception you simply don’t know what it is. The wiring is not there.

maybe depth perception is obtained through other means, awareness of things around you,

hearing can offer depth perception, of sounds of cars coming and going etc

Not in the way described.

Surely though, VR depth perception isn’t “real” depth perception…

buffy said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

maybe depth perception is obtained through other means, awareness of things around you,

hearing can offer depth perception, of sounds of cars coming and going etc

Not in the way described.

yes, but I think the brain fills in gaps , so to speak, using other sensory information

Bubblecar said:

Surely though, VR depth perception isn’t “real” depth perception…

imagined through looking at screens

>>“I should start by saying that I’m severely visually impaired, to the extent of being ‘registered blind’, with an eye condition known as retinitis pigmentosa. I also suffer from an amblyopia and diplopia. So you don’t have to Google what all those words mean, I’m incredibly short sighted, have decreased peripheral vision, I struggle to see in the dark, and I have no sense of depth as I constantly see separate images from each eye, so the world around me is flat, as well as weirdly doubled….<<

From the opening post.

It just doesn’t gel. That description does not work at all. Where to start. RP + amblyopia + diplopia. Odd combination. Not sure where the short sightedness came from. RP does give reduced peripheral vision and reduced night vision as it knocks off the rod receptors in the retina and the peripheral retina is pretty much all rods. It’s progressive though and happens over years. Amblyopia usually results from poor pictures to the brain from one of your eyes in your growing up years. Diplopia is one cause of amblyopia because if you see double your brain develops a switch to turn on off. It’s called suppression. And if this person had suppression, it will be embedded and won’t suddenly stop being there with a virtual reality headset.

Looks to me like someone looked up a stack of vision problems and linked them up in a sentence…

I thought babies were pretty much born with depth perception, like it’s a pre-wired thing, which is known based on experiments which show new born babies are able to tell things like when they are at height (for example on the edge of a table)?

Bubblecar said:

Surely though, VR depth perception isn’t “real” depth perception…

But you still have to have the wiring in your brain so that you actually do know what depth perception is. If you have never experienced it, it won’t happen.

esselte said:

I thought babies were pretty much born with depth perception, like it’s a pre-wired thing, which is known based on experiments which show new born babies are able to tell things like when they are at height (for example on the edge of a table)?

There is innate depth perception and then there are other methods of telling how far away things are which rely on parallax etc. I don’t think anyone really knows when the innate kicks in, but children under 4 years aren’t all that good at it. I’ve watched them develop it from gross level to 40 seconds of arc over their developmental years.

buffy said:

Bubblecar said:

Surely though, VR depth perception isn’t “real” depth perception…

But you still have to have the wiring in your brain so that you actually do know what depth perception is. If you have never experienced it, it won’t happen.

Can hearing and feeling give depth perception?

Bubblecar said:

Surely though, VR depth perception isn’t “real” depth perception…

A different image is presented to each eye, offset in the coding to be separated by a distance equal to the distance between your pupils. In other words, the 3D image you see in VR is exactly the same as the 3D image you see in real life, except “more computery”.

3D in VR is “real”, for a given value of real. It’s certainly much closer to what one sees in real life than 3D movies and such.

buffy said:

esselte said:

I thought babies were pretty much born with depth perception, like it’s a pre-wired thing, which is known based on experiments which show new born babies are able to tell things like when they are at height (for example on the edge of a table)?

There is innate depth perception and then there are other methods of telling how far away things are which rely on parallax etc. I don’t think anyone really knows when the innate kicks in, but children under 4 years aren’t all that good at it. I’ve watched them develop it from gross level to 40 seconds of arc over their developmental years.

OK, thanks. It certainly doesn’t seem unreasonable that proper depth perception would have to be learned. A similar thing happens with hearing, which is why people from different regions of the world variously confuse “r” and “l” sounds (flied lice with your Chinese food), or can hear variations on the sounds of letters that others can’t (native French speakers can apparently distinguish between a number of different “r” sounds which forever elude those who learn French later in life).

There’s a famous case of a man (Sidney Bradford) who went blind at 10 months, and had his sight restored (by corneal transplant) at 52 years. His case is fascinating, because of what it reveals about perception, but in particular he had no depth perception. He could imagine 3D situations because of how he imagined them whan he was blind, but couldn’t make any sense of things like perspective. The treating psychologist, who made several studies of his case, published an article about him, Recovery from Early Blindness (pdf).

Buffy, the only thing that immediately occurs to me is that there is a huge difference between LED lighting and natural ambient lighting. LED lighting can annoyingly attract observation. I don’t know whether this is because of greater brightness, use of phosphors in primary colours, or the rapid flickering effect. Put LED lighting a few centimetres from the eye and it is far more attention-grabbing than ambient lighting.

mollwollfumble said:

Buffy, the only thing that immediately occurs to me is that there is a huge difference between LED lighting and natural ambient lighting. LED lighting can annoyingly attract observation. I don’t know whether this is because of greater brightness, use of phosphors in primary colours, or the rapid flickering effect. Put LED lighting a few centimetres from the eye and it is far more attention-grabbing than ambient lighting.

Almost certainly just the brightness.

buffy said:

mollwollfumble said:

Buffy, the only thing that immediately occurs to me is that there is a huge difference between LED lighting and natural ambient lighting. LED lighting can annoyingly attract observation. I don’t know whether this is because of greater brightness, use of phosphors in primary colours, or the rapid flickering effect. Put LED lighting a few centimetres from the eye and it is far more attention-grabbing than ambient lighting.

Almost certainly just the brightness.

I would love to see a scientific test of that. One way would be to compare brain function in MRI for LED vs photo at same brightness. A less accurate but still useful test would be to measure eye pointing direction for LED single colour vs photo single colour at same brightness.

As an aside I went down to Melbourne today and left in the dark. The Tom Tom graphics were mostly black and when it ticked over at nine they went back to normal. I was very impressed, I don’t think there is a light sensor so someone has taken time to programme that is dark, but only in winter.

AwesomeO said:

As an aside I went down to Melbourne today and left in the dark. The Tom Tom graphics were mostly black and when it ticked over at nine they went back to normal. I was very impressed, I don’t think there is a light sensor so someone has taken time to programme that is dark, but only in winter.

mine seems to adjust time of dimming depending on time of year. tonight it ticked over at 5:16pm

>>Put LED lighting a few centimetres from the eye and it is far more attention-grabbing than ambient lighting.<<

Of course. Proximity and inverse square law. It’s going to be brighter at a few centimetres than the ambient lighting is.