[HN Gopher] Hi-Tech Bifocals Improved My Eyesight but Made Me Lo...
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Hi-Tech Bifocals Improved My Eyesight but Made Me Look Like a Dork
Author : amichail
Score : 153 points
Date : 2024-09-12 13:21 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| eschneider wrote:
| I think I'll just stick with multiple glasses.
| ghaff wrote:
| I find progressive glasses and multifocal contacts help vs.
| "dumb" versions but mostly I still switch glasses.
| apwell23 wrote:
| i wear multifocal contact lenses. has been a game changer for
| me.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| They work just well enough to fail for me. Still need reading
| glasses for close-in work.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I'm not sure why they didn't include a photo of someone actually
| wearing them, so here's one for you:
| https://www.engadget.com/vixion01-glasses-reduce-eyestrain-b...
| v9v wrote:
| The battery life and IP rating are a bit disappointing. Having
| to charge your glasses ~twice a day sounds like a big ask.
| xorcist wrote:
| As long as the battery is fresh. Li-ion degrades pretty
| quickly. For most of the product's lifetime it's going to be
| more than that.
| jeffnappi wrote:
| Very Geordi La Forge esque. Would be nice if this is more
| stylish and normalized by the time I need bifocals
| delichon wrote:
| Good news, you tend to care less about stylish by the time
| you need bifocals. I have leveled up to the point at which I
| can wear bifocals and suspenders without giving any fucks.
| Probably because they no longer alter my probability of
| getting one.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Agree fully, as I put on the dorkiest headband in the world
| to capture sweat from my forehead as I work outside. It's
| not that we older folds don't care what people think, but
| more like we now realize that people rarely care or think
| about others who aren't close to them. Those few dozen
| people that see me in my dorky headband won't even remember
| my face in 15 seconds.
| card_zero wrote:
| I looked at a few images, they look like a combination of:
|
| * Geordi's visor
|
| * A nose clip for swimming
|
| * Stick-on googly eyes
|
| The last design choice seems particularly bold. I guess
| they're less threatening that way? Or it just kind of
| happened for technical reasons.
| supertofu wrote:
| I don't think "dorky" is the right word for these glasses.
| Anachronistic is better. And that can be a good thing or a bad
| thing depending on one's perspective.
| wormius wrote:
| Others mentioned Geordie, but even going back (and obviously
| the "visor" was in the zeitgeist since at least the 70s with
| the android type bots drawn by futurists), my first thought
| was the Six Flags Great America type sunglasses that were
| cool as hell when my older sister came home with them.
|
| This is the closest I could find in search without trying too
| hard.
|
| But yeah, why can't these companies just design regular old
| glasses styles so people don't feel like a dolt and maybe
| would want to buy them. Instead everyone has to be made to
| look like a glasshole and all the entitlement that connotes
| in the mass mind.
|
| https://di2ponv0v5otw.cloudfront.net/posts/2018/03/20/5ab0dc.
| ..
| fwipsy wrote:
| They look like Google glasses because they have the same
| design constraints: small lens and needing to fit a lot of
| electronics in the frame. If they could make them look
| normal I think they obviously would.
| lttlrck wrote:
| They don't look nearly as bad as the title suggests.
|
| Edit: "My eyesight was sharper than usual for both far and
| close distances (down to two inches)" blimey! I might be sold.
| I need read glasses for soldering and close work like that and
| it's a bit of a pain.
| throwanem wrote:
| > They don't look nearly as bad as the title suggests.
|
| Come on, yeah they do. You don't have a car-style cellular
| antenna sticking up any more, the way you would in the 90s.
| But that, and incremental refinement in materials and
| profile, is really all the aesthetic difference from what
| you'd see back then. It doesn't do enough to help.
|
| Granted, you're not wrong about the potential benefits,
| although I think I'd need a lot of convincing that it's
| enough of a qualitative improvement to be worth the cost and
| complexity over fixed magnifiers. But I'd never consider
| these at all if you could see my electronics bench from the
| street.
| pknomad wrote:
| It looks like he's wearing the same visor as robocop:
|
| https://deathbattle.fandom.com/wiki/RoboCop
| duxup wrote:
| I think they look pretty cool.
| pantulis wrote:
| I would not be wearing this outdoors but count me in for
| household activities!
| mlloyd wrote:
| If they could adjust for LED headlights at night, this would be
| even more of a no-brainer. I'd still wear them if needed.
| popcalc wrote:
| You can order here:
| https://pay.peraichi.com/fohjh4665zd/shop/m5yygz2eu4v?landin...
|
| Only 79,200 yen surprisingly.
|
| Initial Setup Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gSqFjZfrH8
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I'm guessing that's Japanese Yen? Even so a bit too pricey for
| me.
| alwa wrote:
| Asking genuinely--are there places that use yen other than
| the Japanese kind? I wasn't aware of any and a casual search
| came up empty.
| righthand wrote:
| It's a misnomer as there is the Chinese Renminbi, known as
| the yuan. The yen and yuan have similar/same symbol. So
| people confuse the two as Japanese Yen and Chinese Yen even
| though that isn't remotely correct.
|
| When you use just "yen" it should be always known as the
| Japanese currency. There should be no need for
| clarification.
|
| The confusion maybe comes from misunderstanding of history
| as the yuan (yoo-ahn) and yen both can mean "round", like a
| coin.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| thanks I didn't know that, I typed yen into XE.com's
| input and it suggested 3 currencies, Japanese first, it
| was a bit dark and didn't have my glasses so I didn't see
| that Chinese was Chinese Yuan, I had a minor memory that
| China also used "Yen" as name of their currency, from
| some time in high school I suppose, and so I took it as
| being that.
|
| One suggestion was also Yemen so probably the input has
| some Levenshtein distance awareness to it
| ajkjk wrote:
| ~560$
| dghughes wrote:
| $764 CAD so about the same as the Samsung (w/ eSIM) smartwatch
| I believe.
| fsckboy wrote:
| you can order there but
|
| https://store.vixion.jp/ :
|
| *We do not ship to overseas addresses.
|
| We ONLY deliver within JAPAN.
| layer8 wrote:
| Forwarding services exist, if you're determined to get a
| unit.
|
| Or here, with some markup:
| https://www.japantrendshop.com/vixion01-autofocus-
| eyewear-p-...
| jfengel wrote:
| I'd love to give it a try. I suspect it feels very odd to have it
| refocus just as my eyes are also refocusing, to the best of their
| very meager ability.
| NBJack wrote:
| Paging LeVar Burton for endorsement. This looks like a Gen 1
| VISOR.
|
| Neat tech, I wonder if getting too used to it could actually lead
| to degredation of your sight.
| yumraj wrote:
| I've been having issues with my bi-focals lately. Looking far and
| cell phone at fine, but laptop sucks.
|
| These can definitely help in that case, but yeah look weird.
| bluGill wrote:
| I got my doctor to write me a computer prescription. Half as
| strong as my regular glasses and single vision perfect for
| computer work and worthless for everything else.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| I am thrilled that this exists. I've been hoping for this since
| my near vision started going south twenty years ago. My current
| options are reading glasses (dollar store ones are as good as
| prescription) or hope that accommodating intraocular lenses are
| available when I eventually have to undergo cataract surgery.
| Bifocals are disorienting, multifocal contacts sort of work but I
| still need readers. It sucks to be on the fringe of so much
| medical technology - have to pay for the insurance but get squat
| in terms of treatment.
|
| Hoping that it or some next-gen product comes to the US double-
| quick.
| maxerickson wrote:
| What's your concern with accommodating intraocular lenses?
| Something that works with your particular vision issues? I live
| in a relatively rural region, and the eye care center that has
| them as an option is one of the big TV advertisers.
| iwanttocomment wrote:
| All current IOLs are non-accommodating: the multifocal IOLs
| work by having multiple rings beam two or three different
| focal lengths into your retina simultaneously.
|
| The way a natural accommodating lens works is that your
| optical musculature physically flexes the lens to focus on
| the point you're looking at. The current non-accommodating
| multifocal lenses are stiff and fixed; the implantee handles
| the transition between focal points entirely in the mind's
| eye. While accommodating IOLs are being developed, they are
| currently not on the commercial market.
|
| I have a multifocal IOL that I honestly love, and has allowed
| me to abandon wearing any glasses; I have crisp and natural
| vision except in certain edge-cases. Other people, however,
| never adapt, or dislike the artifacts of the multifocal rings
| (mostly halos around bright lights such as headlights).
| maxerickson wrote:
| I guess I don't understand. This describes a single beam...
|
| https://www.bauschsurgical.com/cataract/crystalens-and-
| truli...
| iwanttocomment wrote:
| You're correct that Crystalens had indeed been approved
| by the FDA, but has not been widely used because of
| issues with the IOL explanting. While there are resources
| on the web related to it, I'm not sure any surgeon is
| currently implanting it. My apologies if that's not
| accurate, but I wouldn't get a Crystalens today.
|
| https://www.healio.com/news/ophthalmology/20230818/blog-
| thre...
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| iwanttocomment beat me to it. AFAIK, accommodating IOLs have
| been in development/trials forever. I wasn't aware of
| Crystalens but looks like it is not ready for prime time.
| m463 wrote:
| Not clear, can you get prescription versions?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| These would be great as workday wear (when not on Zoom.)
|
| I started looking into computer glasses (short focal length) and
| quickly realized I'd need 2-3 pairs for all my work situations.
|
| The daily charge could pay off if it reduces eye strain and
| perhaps even ends the workday sooner via quicker reading.
|
| Would there be any pitfalls using these primarily to focus on
| screens of varying distances?
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| These look incredible, and a huge improvement over bifocals or
| similar. Having lenses that automatically adjust to focus at the
| distance you're looking would be incredible, for people who need
| one diopter for distance vision and another (or none at all) for
| close-up vision.
|
| I hope it's possible to improve the field of view to match
| ordinary glasses. I also wonder if it'd be possible to change
| different parts of the lens to have different focal points, or
| change fast enough to allow for the equivalent of foveated
| rendering, such that you could look around at different things in
| your field of view and have them all appear in focus.
| vidarh wrote:
| I'd pay a lot if they can get a full enough field of view. I
| detest bi/varifocals, but I detest switching glasses more. The
| entire experience of glasses is a constant annoyance in my
| life.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Ive been reading about myopia, mostly some recent work out of
| japan. Our obsession with 20/20, at distance, seems to be
| exacerbating the issue. Im not sure that these will help. We
| perhaps need to admit that not everyone needs to shoot a gun, fly
| an airplane or even drive a car. The japanese work is showing
| that making things perfect at 20ft often makes the eye contort
| itself to see at the sub-foot range where most reading occurs.
| Acceptable vision at closer ranges would be a better standard
| than forcing perfect vision at distance, or at every distance via
| glasses that change focus.
| stevebmark wrote:
| Hopefully you've already come across myopic defocus lenses and
| low dose atropine in your reading about myopia. Overfocus in
| peripheral vision is a known trigger of myopia progression.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > We perhaps need to admit that not everyone needs to shoot a
| gun, fly an airplane or even drive a car.
|
| "Not everyone can become a doctor, not everyone needs an
| education"
|
| Always easy to decide for other people, right?
| tengwar2 wrote:
| My experience is that that has limited validity. I wear
| varifocals, but for the past few years have had some single
| focus lenses set a bit further out than reading lenses. The
| motivation is to be able to see the top of a large screen,
| which is difficult with varifocals as you have to cant your
| head back. These intermediate lenses are very comfortable
| around the house, and fine for walking around to the local
| shop. However they are not adequate for driving. I could
| probably pass the UK test for legality, but I do need sharp
| vision further off to anticipate signs and hazards.
|
| BTW - most reading is at sub-foot distance? I think not!
| shams93 wrote:
| This is what happens when you decide designers are no longer
| necessary.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Uhh.. or you could just wear multifocal contact lenses which work
| via concentric rings instead of dividing your vision into halves.
| Your brain very quickly learns to focus on objects up close more
| easily, and you don't look like a dork.
|
| https://coopervision.com/contact-lenses/biofinity-multifocal
|
| I love these things. They've been on the market since 2011.
| nocoiner wrote:
| I got fitted with these last year after finally losing the
| ability to focus on small text at reasonable distances. They
| work shockingly well for me. I don't recall there being any
| period of adjustment at all.
| pxc wrote:
| People with low vision sometimes use glasses that are a little
| similar to this but are actual bifocals. The bottom component is
| ordinary glasses while the top component is telescopic. The
| telescopic component's focus can be changed, but it's manual.
| With special training, such glasses can allow1 people who are
| otherwise too visually impaired to qualify for a driver's license
| to receive a limited driver's license with special training.
|
| Glasses like those in TFA might be easier for drivers to adapt
| to, and their autofocus mechanisms might also be reusable for
| proper bioptic lenses, if that proves to be better for driving
| for one reason or another (i.e., some people actually need
| magnification, not just differentiated focus). I imagine if the
| manufacturer ever gets approval for such uses, those customers
| won't care too much what the glasses look like.
|
| --
|
| 1: https://www.webmd.com/eye-health/what-to-know-about-
| driving-...
| jdietrich wrote:
| Ocutech make an autofocus bioptic, which uses a time-of-flight
| sensor.
|
| https://www.ocutech.com/ocutech-bioptics-products-overview/k...
| tdeck wrote:
| Interesting to see Ocutech pop up on HN!
|
| I've used one of their manual ones for years and it made a
| huge difference for me in being able to view presentations
| and lectures while also taking notes. However, the experience
| is not like traditional bifocals, it's like having a small
| telescope stuck to your glasses (because of course that's
| what it is). The telescope has a relatively narrow field of
| view as you'd expect, and is only visible to one eye. Frankly
| I don't understand how folks can use these while driving or
| moving around.
| mbreese wrote:
| As far as I know, the main use while driving is reading
| signs, so the rest of your vision is good enough to drive,
| but you might need the bioptic to read a street sign for
| navigating. I never really thought of them for lectures,
| but that's not a bad idea. However, in an era of
| smartphones, having a ready telephoto zoom (digital or
| optical) in your pocket is also quite handy. (Not that it
| would help while driving!)
| tdeck wrote:
| You're absolutely right about the cell phone thing; I use
| my phone for things like reading distant signs (while
| mostly stationary) and reading restaurant menus that are
| posted on the wall (I probably have taken hundreds of
| such pictures). Using the phone to watch videos or keep
| up with whiteboard exercises would be challenging without
| a tripod to hold the phone and probably a custom camera
| app that lets you quickly pan a live zoomed image.
|
| I've always found it hard to quickly locate distant
| objects in my ocutech though given the limited FOV, and
| doing it at driving speed must require a lot of
| deliberate practice.
| Ekaros wrote:
| How easy would it be to add AR to this in future? It seems like
| small enough that you would not need too much extra mass from
| displays.
| java-man wrote:
| I don't really care how they look (although anything made in
| Japan probably looks far better than anything else), but I wish
| the author, erm, focused on important things, like - what's the
| field of vision in these? Are they blocking peripheral vision,
| i.e. can someone drive with those?
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Also, ViXiON has made it very clear that this isn't a
| medically cleared product and doesn't advise using the glasses
| while driving or any other potentially rigorous tasks.
| jdietrich wrote:
| The size of the lenses and their mountings makes it obvious
| that the field-of-view will be severely restricted - probably
| acceptable for desk work after a period of adaptation, but I
| wouldn't want to wear them when walking around.
|
| I'm unconvinced that these will be better than well-dispensed
| varifocal glasses or multifocal contacts for the vast majority
| of users.
| lolinder wrote:
| > The ViXion01 is rated for 10 hours of battery life and some
| water resistance with an IPX3 rating. At 1.78 ounces, they are
| fairly lightweight, although I'd like to see how they feel after
| a few hours.
|
| I appreciate the honesty in acknowledging that they didn't even
| spend a few hours with the glasses, but man am I sick of the low
| effort content on the internet today.
|
| We're talking about a pair of $555 glasses and the author of this
| review straight up admits that they didn't use them for very long
| at all. This is about more than the weight--they're _glasses_! Do
| you get headaches after a few hours? We wouldn 't know because
| she didn't wear them long enough to tell!
|
| If you look at what she actually wrote, the only thing that
| wasn't drawn from the product description is that it wasn't hard
| to set up and she looked at some signage and was impressed but
| had a hard time with smaller text.
|
| Is this what reviewing a product has to look like in 2024? Does
| anyone actually give more than 20 minutes to something before
| writing up a piece on it and moving on to the next thing?
| brk wrote:
| I agree, I was looking for the rest of the write up, assuming I
| had to scroll through more ads or click through to another page
| or something. That was one of the least informative tech pieces
| I can recall reading.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Unfortunately this is what the companies that pay for content
| pay for, to the extent that if you do better you would get
| penalized either by not getting as much money or not getting
| published at all, and obviously she wants to make money from
| the effort she put into writing it. Which I'm guessing still
| took half a day's worth of work what with incidental stuff
| like sending off emails and answering editors etc. Since
| Gizmodo probably paid 400 dollars for this that's a pretty
| good rate, but how many other things did she spend time
| writing that didn't get bought? So - in the end - this is the
| quality we end up with, which ironically relates to another
| recent HN frontpager
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41547773
|
| Don't see a way out of it. The best one can hope for is that
| she writes a second piece - a week with hi-tech bifocals -
| and manages to sell that one too.
| killcoder wrote:
| Conversely, the last blog post we wrote was 8,000+ words and
| took months of testing, yet the average 'read' time is under 2
| minutes. I'm convinced there's a correlation between interested
| technical users and the blocking of analytics scripts - but if
| I were to naively look at the data, I'd also come to the
| conclusion that "lower effort" was better return on investment.
| I wonder if these tech journalism establishments are following
| their analytics and A/B testing themselves into oblivion.
| fuzzy_biscuit wrote:
| It's a weird trap. With no analytics, it'd be difficult to
| attribute any conversions to a particular user type, so I'd
| wager that, if the hypothesis that lower tech users don't
| block ads/analytics holds up, the metrics skew that way. We
| can't make any realistic assertions without the data for that
| user group. Shrug.
| WWLink wrote:
| It's like meat and potatoes, though. Yes you can fill a
| website up with low effort filler content that keeps your
| viewers engaged and visiting, but in the long run you also
| need some solid meaty stuff.
|
| A lot of that sorta stuff moved over to youtube because it
| was easier to monetize. I think a hybrid of the two is the
| nicest (reading charts from youtube videos sucks)
| tpmoney wrote:
| Being completely fair to the article writer, it looks like this
| is all part of coverage for a trade show. Do folks at trade
| shows usually get multiple hours to personally spend with
| devices they write about such that we could have expected this
| article to have information about what it feels like to wear
| for hours at a time?
| lolinder wrote:
| Nope, that's good context that I missed.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Just a little contet:
|
| I buy new glasses each year. I alternate which glasses I buy
| every other year: every day progressives with sunglass tint,
| and then work/computer (bifocal, larger target area) glasses.
| Each of my purchases from a normal ophthalmologist stocking all
| the usual brands cost >$1000 before insurance discounts kick
| in.
|
| $555 for wearable glasses is less than half what I'm usually
| investing in. And with the strength of my prescriptions, I
| already look dorky enough.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Have you looked into Zenni optical?
| gpm wrote:
| Do these have as short a vertical field of view as it looks like
| they do?
| jerlam wrote:
| $555 sounds very cheap for possibly "the last pair of glasses
| you'll ever buy".
|
| Progressives cost half as much but you'll have to buy a new pair
| on a regular basis.
| analog31 wrote:
| >>> These Hi-Tech Bifocals Improved My Eyesight but Made Me Look
| Like a Huge Dork
|
| Okay, but I wonder if there are any negative aspects. ;-)
|
| Disclosure: Dork.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Shame I won't live long enough to see Deus Ex/Cyberpunk cyber
| eyes.
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