I know this is an old topic but I am blind in one eye since birth and have no depth perception. I can do pretty much anything but have to make adjustments. Learning to park a car was SOOOO much fun. I cannot tell how far away I am from anything.
I actually was very nervous about trying to shoot, thinking I would miss the target entirely and be embarassed. I went today with some friends and on the first shot hit the bullseye dead center. Apparently it was not a fluke, I shot 100 rounds and 50 percent were all within one circle of the bullseye and all were close. I couldnt believe it.,
So I guess it might actually be an advantage! I may not tell anyone . . . .
I have awful depth perception, and I don’t shoot particularly awfully or particularly well. I imagine with practice I could get good. Doesn’t seem to affect it at all.
ETA - um, I didn’t realize I’d already replied to this thread. I STILL have very little depth perception.
I, too, am stereo-impaired (we could start a huuuuuge support group here!), and I cope with almost anything. There are 7 other depth cues besides “parallax”.
Except for racquetball. I don’t have time to mentally figure out by size/position of the ball how close it is… until it’s too late.
Bonus: living in a 2D world makes movies more “real-looking” to me. And now, I’ll save money on all those “3D IMAX” versions!
But I can shoot the foreskin off a rattler at 50 paces…
AHHH, but now they have 3d movies that use gray glasses, not the red on one side and green on the other. I can actually see these. I was so excited when avatar came out - it was the first one I could actually see.
Sorry, guess you’ll have to pay for IMAX now:D
I used to play tennis alot, takes me about 15 minutes each time to reorient myself. Never could get raquetball - I just ended up spinning and swinging my raquet. Too frustrating
I had to wear an eye patch off and on a few weeks ago. It was very disorienting even in familiar surroundings. What I found myself doing was looking directly at an object and then slightly away. That seemed to help for some reason. It’s also odd because that’s the same thing I do in low-light situations. In that context it makes sense since luminance sensitive rods dominate in peripheral vision while color sensitive cones are in the macula. The only thing I can guess is that the two images combined somehow created useful distance information.
Have know 2 different people with one eye. One a sailor and when driving or racing his sail boat he would bob his head side to side. Said he could get distance info that way… The other guy had a private pilots license and he did the same thing, he bobbed his head side to side and I guess his brain was processing that info like it was coming from two eyes.
( Actually have to move your head side to side, not turn it. got to look from two different places… )
With a little practice, I can get a feel for it… I get uncomfortable with the motion pretty quick so I quit but if that was what I had to do…
This actually has created problems for stereoscopic 3D games designers - how do you handle the crosshairs/aim point in a FPS shooter. A laser dot targeting system would be best, but is not suitable for some weapon types (particularly historical type weapons). Does the player choose an eye to use for aiming, and the aim point is diverted to that eye. Or does the crosshair float in space forcing the use of both eyes.
For actual aimed fire using the sights, stereoscopic vision isn’t important, but a lot of self-defense shooting involves a technique called point shooting.
This involves engaging targets quickly at close range without using the sights on your weapon at all. You acquire the skills so your weapon is automatically points where you are looking at. This is mostly used for engaging targets at 7 yards or less.
For point shooting, I would think stereoscopic vision would be more important, since you have to deal with parallax issues.
Everyone has a different trick that works for them. When I was learning to ride my horse a few years ago for some reason I kept slowly falling off to the left when galloping. I figured out my brain only saw the right half and thought I was falling to the right so I unconsciously was shifting to the left. For me, simply touching the saddle horn with my left hand gave me enough tactile input for my brain to know I wasnt falling off, but it was embarrassing til I figured it out!:smack:
Lack of a parallax is a slight advantage in target shooting, because suppression of the image from the off eye is necessary to shoot a gun. Lacking a parallax, you don’t have to close an eye, and you are practiced in many areas of life at suppression of one image. So shooting at paper targets is simpler for parallax-challenged shooters. With little time invested, I’ve always been respectable shooting paper targets and clay pigeons with people much more experienced than myself. Target acquisition in the field, however, might be slower if one does not have a parallax, because peripheral vision is inferior. Also, other facets of vision can be important; I couldn’t hit a target at 500 yards because I’m way too myopic.
One eye here. Wouldn’t dream of parking (I live in Manhattan, so I get by).
As a side note, using one eye is the presumption of all Renaissance painting since, practically speaking, Brunelleschi’s world-historic demonstration ca. 1425 of the “correct” linear perspective of a view of the Florence Cathedral. All Renaissance planar art, from The Last Supper to choose-your-favorite, assumes a single point observation from, indeed, a single location: one uniquely determined by the artist by the viewer facing his artificial projection. (I should add that that one-point intersection of vanishing points in The Last Supper is at the face of Jesus, as viewed above standing height of the viewers; hence the work’s extraordinary sense of exaltation.)
So one-eye it at museums, and follow the projection lines. Why should stereo vision people have all the fun?
I STILL have very little depth perception.