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by rogueSkib 4850 days ago
Visual perception is truly an amazing thing! The author's anecdotes about vision alteration and the brain's ability to adapt were very interesting to me. I have nystagmus: my eyes move back and forth quickly all the time. I've often wondered what it looks like to see without the movement; however, that is how I see: I don't notice the movement at all. My vision with contacts doesn't get much better than 20/40, so I do experience the effects of the movement. I tend to think of my vision as if it's an example of two-point wave interference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_(wave_propagation) The further away an image is from my focal points, the more the interference from movement affects my brain's ability to piece it all together; it's similar to tunnel vision, but instead of darkness on the periphery, it's progressively more blur. To see most clearly, I have to tilt my head to the side, to my "null point" where my eyes move the least. Not to mention my head moves often in some sort of sync with my eyes, especially while reading; once in school, a substitute teacher raised his voice angrily, thinking I was shaking my head at his work on the board!

I'm curious how Google and other developers of high-tech eyewear will account for us with out-of-the-ordinary eye conditions. If the glasses or certain apps rely on eye movements for communication, we probably couldn't use them.