You know... I always have my eyes open to things that could potentially get me closer to my goals faster. As such, one day I did a search for 'VR vision therapy' and hit upon Optics Trainer. I emailed the contact, and got a prompt response from the owner (and only employee) Josh, asking him about product availability. It just struck me as obvious that VR has huge potential for vision training, and here I am with a fancy VR headset and no VR vision training software. Time to get some. I tried my hand at Vivid Vision (the pioneers of VR-based vision training), but that kind of fell through.
So, I got to talking with Josh (based in San Diego), and he struck me as a super-legit guy--with a background in gaming design, and a desire to help people. Turns out game design experience is a very valuable and applicable skillset.
Anyway, we got talking, and I dug where he was coming from, his obvious intelligence, and interest in having a positive impact on people's vision. I was really messaging him because I wanted access to his software--and was willing to pay a lot for it. There are a few versions. One is for doctors to use with their clients, and one is for the clients themselves to use with their own HMDs. The client version isn't yet publicly available, but he did tell me the price range he was planning for, and was shocked as its low price.
Regardless, he agreed to give me a free beta version (I don't mind being a guinea pig). I would benefit from the therapeutic uses of the software, and I would provide him with feedback. From what I've seen so far, the software is more sophisticated than any other vision training software I've seen. The games look better, they're more fun, and some of them are auto-adjusting, meaning they gauge your abilities dynamically and won't push you past your limits. And Josh has access to all the knobs. I asked him 'got any antisuppression games'? Then he was like... 'give me a sec.' Then BAM. Just like that, most of the games are now anti-suppression (Some elements of the game are accessible to one eye; others are accessible to the other eye--and it's randomized--a neat trick he programmed himself. Like I said, smart dude.).
Then the gears started turning. What would be real nice is a community centered around vision therapy--kind of like what I had around ten years ago on Facebook. So Josh quickly spun up a Discord server. We're the only guys in it now. If you're:
- Interested in vision therapy
- Interested in the therapeutic potential of VR for vision training
- Interested in being a part of a community that is centered around those things
