Why do you need to wear prescription eye glasses when wearing a VR headset?

Question

I’m near-sighted, and the VR lens are inches from my face, so why does VR still recommend I wear my eye glasses?

In: 4

Answer 1

TL;DR: The focal distance of your VR headset may be adjustable, or set to a “generic” focal length. Either yours is adjusted incorrectly, cannot adjust far enough for you, or is set to a generic focal length that is wrong for you.

Full answer: This is more complicated than it appears.

Some commenters have said that the lenses within the VR headset make more distant objects look further away so that they look more realistic. This is at best only partially true.

Some other commenters have mentioned that they do not need their glasses at all. This may be true for them, but it may also depend upon their headset and how (or whether) it can be adjusted.

Here is the problem:

If the lenses in a VR headset were intended to make objects that are more distant look more distant and closer objects to appear closer, they would have to dynamically adjust all the time. If you looked at a flower in VR at 5 feet, then a tree at 30 feet, then a mountain at 5 miles, each would require a different focal depth.

The screens inside the VR headset are, however, all at the same distance. If the lenses controlled what was or was not blurry, a flower in front of a mountain scene would show the flower and the mountain in the same focus.

Instead, the VR system tries to determine what you are looking at (or what it wants you to look at) and puts that piece into appropriate focus by adjusting the digital image on the screen.

The lenses, on the other hand, are used to set the images in the VR headset out to a distance where the user is likely to be able to see them clearly. Sometimes they aim for a particular visual effect, such as a 65″ screen at 6 feet. Many of them have adjustable focal distances for this purpose. Others just pick a distance where they figure most people will not need glasses.

Unfortunately, it sounds as if you have VR lenses that have a fixed focal distance that doesn’t work for you. You may want to look at them more closely to see if there is a hidden way to adjust the focal depth, but otherwise you either need to wear corrective lenses, replace the lenses in the headset (probably not feasible), or get a different VR headset.