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That_Science_Guy3 karma

Sure go ahead, as a scientist I think information should be free to use by everyone.

So when you do the test with the pen, you actually only see one screen? That would make training very hard I believe, hope you'll get some good results

That_Science_Guy3 karma

Do you know the prism diopter of your glasses?

I can't see 3D either, but my situation is very different. I would need about 1cm/m prisms on each side, but since I'm wearing contacts I don't have the correction (and never had before). Since the correction is quite small, my optometrist actually recommended to not get prism glasses but rather do visual training to fix my eyes permanently.

I'm not stereoblind though, both eyes contribute to the vision process, and if I have enough time to focus I can see 3D. For example steroscopic images (cross-eyed) work really well for me, also the ones with the weird colors that are in many "3D" books. 3D movies work to some extend: It feels like looking through a window, I can perceive depth behind the screen, but effects that pop out towards you don't work.

In everyday life I use other depth cues, like relative sizes of objects, straight lines that represent the perspective, or, if the objects are close, the focal length of my eye, i.e. I focus on one object, if the other one is still in focus, it's roughly the same distance. Because of that I don't have any problems driving or just in general, but I've always been bad at ball games.

There's a simple test to figure out if you're actually stereoblind: while sitting in front of your computer take a pen and focus on the tip. Now move the pen towards your nose. When it's less than an inch from your nose you should see your screen twice. If you don't, you're stereoblind, your brain discards one image completely. If you see the screen twice, your brain just can't calculate depth from the two images because the axes are off by too much.

That_Science_Guy2 karma

You mentioned vision therapy. Now your correction is much bigger than mine, so do you think you'll be able to fix your eyes with training or is it just to prevent them from getting even worse?

That_Science_Guy2 karma

Best of luck to you then, you're still very young, and your eyes are still developing, so hopefully your therapy will fix your vision and you don't have to wear the glasses your whole life.

Do you notice any advantages of your situation? I've always been able to read graphs, technical drawings and 3D models on 2D surfaces really easily, which contributed to my choice of career path early on. Not sure if that's a common thing or because my parents were in the math/science field.

That_Science_Guy2 karma

Since you were stereoblind, do you actually know what you're supposed to do here? Like I said before those are easy for me, even though I can't see 3D. It's not about 3D, it's about stereoscopic vision.

Basically you have to make your eyes cross a little, so you get 2 pictures that overlap on the repeating pattern, for example on the small green part on the bottom. You should be able to see something with your glasses on. It might be hard to recognize at first, but after a while you'll be able to figure it out, it takes a moment to focus on the screen while keeping your eyes crossed. Hint: it's text (2 lines), if you only see a horizontal line in the middle of the image you're overlapping too far.