Does a person’s eyes pointing in different directions affect their eyesight (depth perception and field of vision for example)?
In: 10
Typically both eyes physically see bit the brain cant reconcile the images and it uses only the dominant eye. This ruins stereoscopic depth perception.
Depth perception? Oh hell yes. One of my eyes is stronger than the other and it has caused me to have horrible depth perception. I can only imagine it would be more pronounced with a drifting eye.
Our brains do this super awesome fusion of the images of each eye into one picture. For someone with an eye abnormality affecting one eye, the brain will “favor” the image from the good eye.
In almost every case, the brain is receiving less information to form its picture vs two eyes with 2020 vision. And will have poorer vision in almost every measure.
Yay for glasses and modern optical science!
When the eyes are not synchronized, you start to view two images superimposed rather than one unified image. You can focus on one image or the other, but one will usually be dominant by default.
For a practical example of what the imposed image looks like, hold up your hand a moderate distance (1-2 feet) from your face, so that it is blocking part of one eye’s view. One eye will be impeded by it, but your other should be able to see “around” it because of the different angle. As a result, part of your hand should be “ghostly” in a way, where you can see it but you can also partially see *through* it to what is behind.
Regarding FOV and Depth, it will affect depth perception roughly the same as viewing through a single eye since you no longer have stereo vision to triangulate distances. You can still guess based on size/perception and minor variants, but a lot of it is gone.
For FOV it won’t be a true “FOV” since you’re not viewing a single wide-angle image, but instead you are seeing to different images at the same time. You’ll be able to see more around you, purely by virtue of looking in two places at once. The utility will be limited however because of having to focus on the eye that provides coverage of what you are looking at.
I was born with strabism, which was later corrected via surgery when I was 4. I still have a bit of a drifting eye but you generally can’t tell unless I point it out.
My depth perception works differently to regular people. I do perceive depth, but not via eye parallax. I perceive it even with only 1 eye open. Which is also how my eye-sight works. It’s a bit hard to explain, but let me try:
I basically have a “dominant eye active” – this one gives me about 80% of my vision. The other just kinda fills in a little periphery. I can mentally “switch” which eye is the dominant one. I just think about it and it switches.
As to the depth perception itself – I do not really know how it works but I guess my brain just adjusted to deducing depth from the viewed image itself. I can play VR games no problem – I fully perceive them as “real, 3D” in front of me, they are as immersive as for anybody else.
I cannot watch 3D movies though. I do not perceive stereoscopic 3D vision (3D movies or those images you need red-blue filters for), it’s basically like if you were to try, but just with one eye open – doesn’t really do anything.
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