More changes

More exciting developments coming.

Today I noticed significant changes during daily activity even before I did vision therapy.  Better divergence, more light.

I'm getting better results with the fixation cards.  As I mentioned in previous entries, it appears that performance improves near the end of the session.  Today I got curious to see what would happen if I removed the prism.  It was pretty difficult, but I could tell that soon I would be able to do get good performance without any prism.  Then I went to to Brock String, and I had very good performance.  The double images are closer than they ever have before.

Objective changes now appear to be occurring very rapidly.  I think maybe it's to do with the latest technique I developed that I mentioned briefly in a previous entry.  That is, I fix and accommodate sharp with the right eye with both eyes on their respective targets.  It can take a while for me to get it sharp.  But once it's sharp, then I focus on fixing with the left eye.  I don't, per se, worry about getting it completely sharp, but I focus on fixing with the left eye while the right eye is sharp.  Once I get that, then I start fixing hard with the left eye.  While I do this, I pay attention to see to it that the right eye stays sharp.  By doing this, I think I am tuning the accommodation mismatch between the two eyes, because the eye naturally wants to accommodate for things that it's fixing on.  And while I'm doing this, I'm focusing on the feeling I have while doing this, so I can remember it for later.  And hopefully build onto the feeling.

In other news, I'm again working with the guys at Vivid Vision.  I can't say much about it since I signed an NDA.  So that's going on while I'm doing traditional vision therapy.

I used Vivid Vision with the DK2 (Oculus Rift 2nd generation developer kit), and it seemed to do interesting things with my eyes, but in the end, it didn't seem to work.  This is consistent with what James has said about his current generation of VV software.  He said something along the lines that it works best with people who have mild to no strabismus.  

But for someone like me, who had moderate esotropia and hypertropia with very heavy suppression as an adult?  I suspect the reason this VT journey has been so challenging for me is because my visual system would have been completely content being the way it was.  My vision was stable as a strabismic.  There were times when, as a child, I noticed a very slight drifting double image in my field of vision, but it was barely visible.  My suppression was almost complete.  Recovering full stereopsis would be a task of pulling my other eye back from the dead.  Now as an adult, trying to gain stereopsis involves constant deliberate action the entire way.  Everything has to be done through a grueling, manual, conscious process.

Right now, for people who are in a situation similar to my own, I see vision therapy via HMDs, as in Vivid Vision, as a complement to traditional vision therapy.  When I'm doing traditional vision therapy, it's just me, my visual system, fixation cards and prisms.  It's very simple, and I can put all of my attention on using feedback to build on connections.  From my current perspective, the amount of concentration I am able to muster is definitely helped by the simplicity of the equipment.  And the amount of work that I'm able to do seems like it would be hard to acccomplish via VR games with a cord around me as I walk around.

But I'm going to keep an open mind.   As my angle improves, as it has been via traditional vision therapy, perhaps the antisuppression aspects of the VV games will prove beneficial.  But of course, we're still talking about the first generation of software.  Eventually VR HMDs will have built-in eye tracking, 4k displays, will be much smaller, be wireless, and have the ability to control the angle with which light rays enter the eyes.  Then programmers will have the ability to make software that's potentially much more flexible and powerful than anything that's possible today.