I’m fascinated to hear from Vision Pro users how vision correction works and doesn’t work. @xdev has written some about how he can still use his hard contacts, though with less eye-tracking accuracy, and @mcohen was just telling me privately that he needs prisms in one lens of his glasses, which the Vision Pro lenses won’t do, so he sees double in that eye while using the Vision Pro. Unless he moves the window very close in virtual space, which turned out to be a big win for him.
I wrote about this back in June, and I’m still curious about what’s really going on in the optics of the Vision Pro. It seems that it’s somehow tweaked to be in focus only with 20/20 (roughly speaking) vision, but is there more to that than software? My eyes focus really well at a couple of inches, which is just about how close the screens really are.
Is there an optometrist out there who might know more about what’s going on?
I have heard that the (fixed) focal distance for the AVP is 1.3 meters. The physical distance is a few cm but the optics make it appear to the eye as though the screen is 1.3 m away. This is surprising to me - I would have thought that setting it at infinity would make more sense. Then people with good distance vision but poor close up vision ( like people with presbyopia or with cataract replacement lenses) would have no trouble. I have cataract lenses and have very good vision at distances >20 feet so would need “reader” lenses in the AVP. (But I doubt I will ever buy one, so this point is moot).
This was my assumption too, Adam. And after completing the demo I asked if I could try the device without the prescription inserts they used, based on analyzing my eyeglasses. (Like you, I’m near signted.)
However, to my surprise and disappointment, without the corrective lenses the Vision Pro displays were about as blurry as my regular vision.
I did buy a Vision Pro, and had to wait a week for Zeiss to ship my lenses. During that time I was able to use the device, but not well, as my natural tendency to squint in order to improve my vision seemed to interfere with the eye tracking. (Not always, but often enough to be annoying.) Now that my lenses have arrived, things are crystal clear and the device works much more smoothly.
Hoping that Adam’s info was not definitive, and while in a financial dither over whether to purchase a Vision Pro, I looked into the specific requirements for Zeiss to provide the required lenses for those of us without naturally 20/20 eyesight at their Prescription guide.
My glasses have a prism correction, without which I have some double vision. Before I got my new prescription, I couldn’t play tennis very well, although I could – with some unease – drive a car.
The last question on the Zeiss checklist is, “Do you wear glasses with prism correction?” The default answer is “NO”, but if you click “YES”, you get this response: “We’re really sorry, but at the moment ZEISS Optical Inserts cannot provide vision correction for prism. Unfortunately, we are currently unable to produce ZEISS Optical Inserts for you.”
So, no Vision Pro for me. (My bank account sighed with relief.)
Well, it did work, just not optimally. This is worth noting. It took a week for my lenses to arrive and I was able to use the device somewhat while waiting.
Secondly, as I stated, the reason for the surprise is what Adam expressed. The screens are well within clarity range of the nearsighted.
I scheduled an AVP demo and brought my lens prescription, but they have a machine that reads your glasses to decide what correction to use. The machine didn’t work. I chose to go ahead with the demo with what was called standard (I think) lenses. I have a fairly strong correction for astigmatism, no correction for nearsightedness, and small correction for farsightedness. Without glasses I see objects near and far but edges are soft focus.
[This posted while incomplete]
Surprising to me, everything I saw in the AVP was very clear and sharp, including small print which normally isn’t clear without my glasses and gets more blurry the closer it is. I need my glasses to keep print from ghosting into distracting multiple ghosts up close, but that didn’t happen. The only visual problem I encountered was some rolling-shutter-like effect when turning my head from side to side. This was most notable in the 3D panoramas, which also have some perspective distortion, probably shot with wide angle lenses. I’m not going to buy an AVP for at least two generations, if ever. But the demo made me wonder if I’d need the prescription lenses. Just my particular case, but it surprised me.
When you get prescription lenses, the actual prescription is loaded to your IOS Health app. My normal lenses are progressive, so my actual prescription includes the basic numbers for distance seeing, a modification for reading, and an astigmatism correction. The prescription for the Vision Pro lenses does not include the reading modification. So I’m no surprised that you were able to work fairly well with an uncorrected AVP.
I would be careful if you’re testing AVP – or any kind of optical system – without the proper prescription. Eyestrain builds up over time, so you may be fine for the first several minutes but have serious eyestrain after using the thing for an hour. In 2023, researchers for the Canadian Navy recommended use of AR/VR be limited to 25 minutes at a time. That was before AVP, but the longer you use anything with some eyestrain, the more likely you are to have problems.
I have been concerned about this from the beginning, especially since the issues with my hard contacts cause the eye tracking to be more work for me. I have been paying more attention to my eyes lately, curious to see if there are any issues (both with headset and without).
I have noticed some eye tiredness alter using Vision Pro. Sometimes I put this up to the extra strain of the eye tracking not working too well for me (there’s less such strain when I use a trackpad for navigation) and I have wondered if the Vision Pro is bad for my eyes. But in the past few days I was working on my tax preparation on my Mac and staring at numbers all day along, and when I paused to take a break, I realized my exhausted eyes felt exactly the same as they did after using the Vision Pro for a while. In other words, it’s the concentration on a screen/task that’s the issue, not the device. And I don’t experience such issues after watching media in Vision Pro, just doing navigation, manipulating windows, working, etc.
Also, I’ve been tracking (ha ha) my eyesight when not using Vision Pro and it’s been great. I can still see really well with my contacts, so I don’t think the headset is causing any issues. I do still find it helpful and relaxing to regularly look at faraway sights (mountains and distant trees) and adjust the focus of my eyes, but I don’t see any side effects of Vision Pro so far.
Ultimately, I think it’s little different from other screens, though the intensity is a factor. The fully immersive Vision Pro experience can be more straining than other types of screen time, so I do recommend taking breaks. However, I also find that the VR experience can be relaxing and not all Vision Pro experiences cause the same strain.
From my research for magazine articles (I write about optics), the problems with other systems is more with the augmented reality content than the virtual reality content, and the problem may be worse from looking at both types of content simultaneously than just looking at one. I have not tested AVP and do not plan to because I have had cataract surgery and problems with floaters. I also had eyestrain working on my taxes, and I was using a 27-inch Dell screen on a MacMini. AR/VR technology is still a work in progress, and I am not convinced it will work for everyone. If the limit is eyestrain, it may not work for everyone, just as most of us can’t bench press 300 pounds.