Minor change made a significant difference

I recently made a minor change to my workout.  I'm now doing about eight minutes of fixation card exercise and another eight minutes of large bead jumps with the Brock String.

The goal that I'm currently working toward with the fixation cards is to get the images to come in clearly for both eyes simultaneously at all distances.  Just a few days ago I appear to have made very significant progress in that regard.  When using only one eye at a time I can get the image to come in clearly when the paper is about three inches from my eye.  That is a normal accommodation limit for most people.  But when I use both eyes one of the eyes gets much blurrier sooner.  But I noticed the other day that I can get much closer than I could before.  This seemed to coincide when I began implementing those bead jumps into my regimen a few days ago.

So that's good.  I did seem to have a particularly good eye day yesterday.  I was looking at my eyes in the mirror as well.  The deviation---it looks pretty good.  Sometimes I forget and don't realize that I'm making progress until I check in like that.  The workouts have just become a part of my life, I guess.  It'll be weird to think of a day when I'm not doing any vision therapy.

Still making progress with fixation cards

Still been making progress with the fixation cards.  Still been doing the same techniques since the last blog entry.

It seems there is quite a way to go in order to have vision that works the way I imagine it should (able to get both images to come in clearly simultaneously).  When I close the left eye and fully accommodate with the right eye, I can tell that my muscles inside of that eyeball are doing something different from what they're doing when both of my eyes are open and fixated on the paper (each respective image on the fixation card).  But I can't quite fully accommodate each eye on each image.  But it does seem to be improving each and every week.  Getting closet to the ultimate goal with each week.

The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are being shipped now.  That means that Oculus is now making the Oculus software available on their website.  Although it doesn't officially support the DK2, I haven't yet found anything that doesn't work with the DK2.  Nice.  Thank you, Oculus.  Also, it comes with free demos, like Lucky's Tale, some VR films, and a number of other things.

Holy crap, has the software improved.  Everything up to this point has been amateur stuff.  Lucky's Tale, on the other hand, is incredibly polished.  Very beautiful and smooth.  It's a platformer, very similar to Mario Brothers or Mario Brothers 64.  But they make spectacular and creative use of the VR medium.  It's very fun, and I've had the most powerful stereo effects yet.  It's very, very impressive.  And this is still all with the DK2.  In a few weeks or so I should have an HTC Vive (better than the Rift and far, far better than the DK2).

I am positive that the exercises I've been doing are the reason the experience has been so impressive.  But anyway.  In a few weeks or so I'll probably take Pasquale's advice.  He had some advice about getting clear fixation cards, among other things.  Also, hopefully we'll soon be seeing some more mature Vivid Vision software now that commercial VR is available.

Progress with fixation cards

Things have been going really well with the fixation cards.  I've been doing it basically every day.

I just bought a house so I've been busy with a lot of things, so I skipped some days here and there with vision therapy.

Today I've noticed very significant progress with the fixation cards.  I can get pretty good divergence with the baseball.  That is, I can get them on top of one another fairly easily.  It was pretty surprising.

Still no depth.  But I think I need the accommodation to be in sync--for both pairs of images to be clear in order for that to happen.  It hasn't yet happened, but I do feel the beginning of what I expect will be depth, and that it's going to get stronger and stronger as I get better at the exercise.

It's great seeing progress.  I made quite a lot of progress with the Brock String and now I'm making good progress with the fixation cards.  And I have noticed improvement in vision outside of the exercise as well.  I just feel like I'm using both eyes more and more.

Sometimes it's difficult to pay attention through both eyes simultaneously--to know whether the image is clear or not--but I'm getting better.  My ability to focus on the activity is improving as well.  Mental focus on what I'm doing is a huge part of the exercise.

Normally I fix with the left eye, and then work to fix with the right eye at the same time.  The right eye image is blurry when I do this, and when I diverge to superimpose the double images.  I'll pull card away and this will do something to make it clearer, but then I bring it closer while simultaneously trying to keep it clear.  I sort of move it back and forth, observe the changes and feeling of eye muscles as I try track the images and try to keep them both sharp and focused.  I think this helps.  Then sometimes I will straight-up fix with the right eye, just so I know what focused looks like.  Focused and full-on accommodated for each eye is slightly different.  But I do this so I don't lose sight of what the goal is: both eyes should be fully accommodating.

Not sure when I'm going to achieve my goals.  But I'll keep going.  The VT doesn't take up that might time.  I'll keep doing it for as long as it makes sense--although I'm confident that powerful new technologies will arrive for vision rehabilitation in the coming years.  I'll have it someday, in the meantime it's just about not letting it dominate my life and maintaining a good balanced approach.  Try to get as much out of each individual session as possible.

Another self tip

Fix with the left eye, get it sharp, and then worry about sharpening the right eye.  Add in some movement to encourage fixing with both eyes.

Remember to be behind the lazy eye

Working with fixation cards

I'd been working with this for the past few weeks to Tuan's suggestion.  It was brutally hard when I was doing it with him on the other end of Skype.  I tried doing it with a prism and could barely get the double images to superimpose even when using a seven diopter prism.

That was about a week and a half ago.  Since we'd spoke I'd got much much better at it.

I noticed a lot how much better I am at it today.

The idea is that you diverge your eyes so that the left eye fovea is on the left side target and the right eye fovea is on the right side target.  When this is happening, you should see three balls (say, three footballs if you're on that line), because you're technically seeing four balls (two per eye, and you have two eyes), but one part left eye pair of balls is on top of one part of the right eye pair of balls.  So the middle ball is a combination of the two, and the other two are seen just once by each eye.  

Sounds a little confusing, right?  Well it is a little confusing, at least at first.  

One thing Dr. Tran mentioned is that when I diverge my eyes and try to fuse the images that it's important to try and get the double images to come in clearly.  Well, that's pretty difficult to do.  But he said something that struck me.  'Try to think about what it takes to make each eye come in clearly and then try and do that for both eyes simultaneously'.  Sort of like singing and playing guitar simultaneously.  Incidentally I never could sing and play guitar at the same time.  But when I thought about it, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to do this.  People override their accommodation reflex all of the time, particularly when they resolve those random dot stereograms (Magic Eye).  This is a direct confrontation with the accommodation reflex.  

The fact that he said that just made me realize that I should be able to do it, and so I started trying, and I'd been doing that for the past one and a half weeks, and I'd made very significant progress in that small amount of time.  

I don't need any prism to get the double images to superimpose (for the bottom football).  As you move up it gets more challenging (requires more divergence), and I've been able to get decent superposition at times with the soccer ball.  I remember early last week it was damn near impossible to get the left eye pair to come in clearly until  around the nine minute mark (I only do 10 minutes--it's a fairly strenuous workout).  But now it takes less and less time for me to get both sets of images to come in clear.  That is to say it is challenging.  And as it gets easier there's a simple way for me to add to the challenge.  Move up to the next set.  When football gets too easy, move to soccer ball.  As that gets easier, move to baseball.

You're supposed to get depth, but I haven't yet had any.  My suspicion is that when I'm able to get both coming in perfectly clearly, I will get depth.  I've gotten a very subtle sensation that I might have seen something that might have been the beginning of depth.   It would make sense because it's only when you're focusing on something with both eyes simultaneously that you can truly seee through both eyes simultaneously.  I imagine it will be an 'oh shit' moment.  

Messing with prisms again

I'd been thinking of ways I can load the Brock String. I busted out some of the old prisms I had bought around four years ago.  I did some exercise with the base in.  This forces my turning in eye to move a bit exo in order to superimpose the double images.  So it's making the muscles go a bit further than normal.  I did that for a few minutes yesterday and then I went back to the normal Brock String exercise thinking that it probably wasn't doing anything.

Suddenly today when I was doing the Brock String I noticed that the closest beads were really close to me, noticeably more than normal.  The thought occurred 'is that because of that one minute I did the other day with the prisms? nahh...'  But then I thought about it a bit more and realized that's probably what it was.  And then I did the rest of the exercise with the prism.

When I finished the Brock String and went back to Windlands in VR, I was sort of surprised by how things looked.  Things had improved quite a lot.   The game had jarred me a bit.  Running around and grapping onto things really gave me a sense of motion.  Things were different from yesterday, noticeably.  That's one of the things that people tell me when I show them my Oculus Rift with a demo like a rollercoaster.  They often mention how amazing the sense of movement is--it really almost feels like they're being thrown around.  Well, I'm starting to get a sense of that.

I guess there are different ways that prisms can be used.  There's sensory fusion, and then there's motor fusion, right?  It seems the typical use is sensory fusion, allowing superimpositioning, and thus, allowing the brain to rebuild on the binocular depth neurons.  And then the eyes align themselves in order to give the brain the information it's being trained to want.

I'm using the prisms the other way.  I'm actually making it harder to superimpose.  I'm making it so that my muscles have to stretch more than usual (exo) in order to superimpose.  I think of this a little bit like taking a bendy material and bending it more than you where you want it to settle, because when you let go, it's going to bend back a little.  I don't want exotropia.  But practicing exotropia might make it more easy for my muscles to maintain a straight gaze since they're so accustomed to esotropia.  Maybe it's necessary to sort of trick my muscles in this way because my muscles were screwed up with the surgeries I'd had when I was a child, who knows.  I'm curious to see what happens later this week.