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by snuxoll 3438 days ago
People with amblyopia (lazy eye) are much more prone to stereo-blindness than people without, since your eyes aren't properly aligned stereoscopic 3D not only "doesn't work" for many but the tricks your brain normally uses to compensate don't work correctly and can cause headaches.

In fact, you can test this yourself. Go look up "split-depth GIF", then compare the experience you get from those to a traditional 3D image (either in theaters or from a 3DS or something else that uses parallax to fake 3D). This was the first time in my life I've ever actually experienced the '3D' effect coming from any 2D plane.

Another fun thing to try: go try and hit a baseball, catch a ball, whatever. You may notice you are not very good at this, even with a fair amount of practice. These small objects don't give off depth cues your brain normally uses since it can't rely on stereoscopic vision, the lack of shadows, small change in relative size and a lack of other objects to use for depth positioning can make this a difficult if not almost impossible task for someone with amblyopia.

Want to know how I know all of this? Because I've done all of this, my left eye is horrifically bad and has been since the day I was born (80/20 in the left eye, 40/20 in the right), and even after TWO strabismus surgeries it decided to misalign itself again and I've suffered from occasional double vision ever since.

If you're still relatively young (20's or early 30's) you can check out vision therapy, there's been a lot of great success rates on retraining the brain to properly integrate the information from both eyes that will allow you to see "normally" and likely remove these issues. Personally I've opted not to because at 25 years old I really have no desire to change how I perceive the world (it's not a comforting thought, especially since once you've retrained your brain you can't exactly undo it).