More progress with stuff

More progress with fixation cards and prisms, columns, modified Brock String, and Vivid Vision.

Quite a bit more.

Last entry I talked a bit about how I was doing fixation cards exercises with four diopter prisms and sometimes removing the prism altogether.

I wasn't quite ready for removing the prism altogether.  I was ready for a reduction of prism.
Currently I'm ... and this is really fascinating to observe for myself.  Currently, I'm sort of alternating between two diopter prism and no prism when doing fixation card exercises.  About two minutes in I stop using the prism, and then go without.  Sometimes I put it back in.  But day after day I notice that I need prism less and less.  It is fucking awesome to see.  I don't know how the visual system works, but I know how to interact with it.  I know how to improve it.

Today I used the two diopter prism maybe for total of two minutes during the fixation cards exercise.  I could tell that it was a productive session, and I was able to fix both eyes for a good part of it.

One thing I want to say that has been really helpful was this technique I developed a while back, in which I would focus on getting perfect accommodation on my right eye, and then pay attention to fixing with the left eye.  There was a sort of stickiness to the accommodation on the right eye, so it would stay accommodated, while fixing with the left eye.  This, I believe, was helping me override the accommodation reflex and force simultaneous accommodation.  But more than that, it gave me feedback which told me what good binocular posture feels like.  I've been using those feelings to use in my everyday experience.  So it's sort of become a reinforcing habit.  In a way, I feel like I'm now building and reinforcing binocular vision skills even when I'm not technically doing vision therapy.   I'm gaining stereopsis without vision therapy.  It's become a self-reinforcing thing.  It feels like that.

Anyway, Brock String was freaking awesome.  The double image beads are so close to each other.  Divergence and convergence are getting very easy.  I'm noticing this ability everywhere now.

As mentioned in previous entries, I cannot talk about the Vivid Vision stuff too much.  But I'm doing it every day.  I think it's part of what's helping.  I think it's going to be very useful software for many people.  I was sort of pissed off when I heard that the software is going to only be available to be administered as part of a program with vision therapists.  But now I 100% understand their decision to do it this way.  It's not a liability thing.  It is because guidance is needed in this sort of enterprise.  And Vivid Vision is going to be a very powerful and useful tool in the vision therapy toolkit.

What else... uhhh,  Doom 3 BFG Edition.  Holy crap.

Not really sure what Doom 3 BFG Edition is.  It's something about making Doom 3 work better with 3d.  But someone made a Vive mod for it.  And it's fucking awesome.  If you have a Vive, you need to get Doom 3 BFG and then mod it for the Vive.  It is one of the best games for the Vive, period.  It costs like $4.

It's sort of funny because the game is 13 years old, so it's made to run on 13-year old graphics cards, so it runs incredibly well on the Vive.  It's weird because it's hard to imagine playing a normal WASD FPS-type game with two hand-held motion controls.  But the modders made it work.  Very well.  The quality of the game really comes through, and even though it's 13 years old, it feels like the game is made for VR.  And like I said, not just like any VR game, but a really good VR game.  I've yet to encounter any bugs.  Everything works very well.  The graphics are great.  And it's really scary.  Because everything is in stereo 3d, and very high quality with no glitches, it's sort of like playing Doom 3 for the very first time, but in a way that's waaaayyy better and more immersive than any prior experience of Doom 3.  It's just awesome.  And it's $4.