Vivid Vision

I feel compelled to make an entry today because I had a particularly good vision day.  I almost want to say that I'm beginning to experience fusion.  Not quite there, but I'm beginning to understand why James Blaha renamed Diplopia to Vivid Vision.

Heh, well first of all, Diplopia is a bad thing.  You don't want it.  It's something that you want to fix.  So naming the game Diplopia--a game whose purpose is partly about assuaging diplopia--is sort of like Imodium AD instead naming their product Diarrhea.

'What the... No!  That's exactly what I don't want!'

Vivid Vision, on the other hand, is a very good way to describe how I see my vision changing.  It's... just becoming more... vivid.  It's useless using words to describe it.  But it's like the stimulation is turned way up.  I notice more, colors are brighter.  And it has a lot to do with less suppression.  I'm aware of what's going on in the lazy eye now.  Its input is being noticed simultaneously, and it's all of this extra input that's causing me to use the word vivid.

Interestingly I think my recent progress has a lot to do with an update that James made to his software.  For months I was stuck on version .62 beta (Diplopia), because all of the newer versions would crash on my machine.

About three week ago I gave the latest version a try (I had updated my graphics card's drivers and also the newest Oculus Rift runtime).  When I tried it again, the game actually ran without crashing.  Now, Diplopia *ahem* Vivid Vision is really vastly improved.  Now I can appreciate all of the improvements James has made to the game.

The controls are much improved on Space.  The sensitivity is much dialed down.  The graphics are improved.  There are some new game elements (hard to describe).  I think the biggest improvement is the rendering of the spacecraft itself.  It has these bright, bright thrusters, and the spacecraft has quite a lot more detail on itself.  The spacecraft is only seen on the right eye.  Everything else is seen on the left eye.  Normally I want to sort of suppress the right eye, but because the spacecraft is so big and bright, it makes it much easier to notice input from both channels simultaneously.

It's funny to think that a simple software patch could make such a tremendous difference in the quality of my life.  I know I've said this before, but in case you stumble upon this, Thank you, James!!