Anyone else lack proper binocular vision?

Surgery on both eyes as a child (at different ages).

If I look at you with my left eye you won’t notice a thing. If I look at you with my right eye, the misalignment is quite obvious.

One eye is nearsighted; the other farsighted. I do reading/computer work with my left and distance stuff with my right.

Can’t catch a darned thing and I am extra careful when parallel parking, but otherwise life is good.

I had a vision test early on in school. I was told to look into a box and say whether the apple was on the table or not. I looked into the box. I asked, “What apple?” The tester, obviously thinking that I was a moron, told me that it was a little red light and not a real apple. I told her that there was no apple, red light, or anything other than a picnic table in the box.

Obviously, I failed the test. Attempts to correct the problem failed as miserably as I did. I don’t have proper binocular vision. Everything looks flat to me and only things like shadows and size differences let me know where things are in relation to each other. This isn’t a problem most of the time. I can get around without bumping into things and I can drive.

I can’t see what’s hidden in Magic Eye pictures. The worst thing is that I had to stop playing baseball. I could play when I was young and the ball moved relatively slowly. I had time to figure out where it was. But as I got older and the ball got faster, it became dangerous. Line drives would whiz past my head while I put my glove it the wrong place. I couldn’t hit a fastball. I initially compensated by switching to the other side of the plate so I was tracking the ball largely with my dominant eye, but that didn’t help for long. It finally hit home at the batting cages one day. The machine was throwing fastballs and I kept missing them. I thought they were all outside, so I stepped in a bit closer. After a few pitches I told someone that the machine couldn’t get the ball over the plate. He watched and saw that the pitches were all inside, not outside as I perceived them. I was in danger of being hit by an 80 MPH fastball and I didn’t have a clue. I haven’t played fast-pitch since. Wiffle ball is about my speed now.

I have a lazy left eye (which is now developing an astigmatism, dammit), and have never had binocular vision. It’s never impeded anything I’ve done. I was a solid softball player and basketball player, I’m a crack shot with clay pigeons, and my friends are consistently wowed by my parallel parking ability. I do however, still walk into door frames. Go figure. Seriously though, all it takes is practice. I know how big a softball is, therefore with practice it becomes easy to tell how far away it is (smallsmallsmallholycrapitsBIGcatchit!). The only time I have issues is the split second when I switch from tracking the ball with one eye to tracking it with the other. At which point I either put my glove in front of my face, or duck and scream like a little girl. Thankfully, this happens only rarely. :slight_smile:

Another amblyopiopod here. Eye patch plus drops from ages 6-8. I have some depth perception, but can’t look through binoculars… I can’t fuse the two images together.

My brother may weigh in here - he, apparently subconsciously, switches from one eye to the other but never really uses both at the same time very much. Or something like that.

Hah. I was lucky-ish in that my vision problems were detected really early (I first had surgery for it at about six months old), and sometime around the second surgery (7 years old or so) I finally figured out the ‘right’ answers to some of the questions. I have no idea what, exactly, the ‘pick up the fly’s wings’ things was ever about, but I figured out that if I went through the motion, it got a positive reaction.

I never had any 3-D vision, mostly due to craptacular myopia and astigmatism. Flatvision is good for art school, because I didn’t have to work hard to get images onto a flat surface. I could see “magic eye” pictures, but they looked wrong. I was never any good at judging speed on moving things.
Last year, I had laser surgery and my eyes are now 20/20 and they work together. Suddenly I could see 3-D. Did you know that stuff like chairs and walls LEAN OUT INTO SPACE?! Lamps and cats and cups do too! I had to spend the first day inside quietly freaking the f— out and trying to get over the feeling that the universe was crowding me.
But I still cannot judge relative accelerations well, and the universe quietly folds back flat at night.

The first episode I remember was when I was 4. I went from 20/40 to 20/400 in two days.
Scary.

for those of you that have never had the pleasure of being 20/400 your eye test goes like this:
Read the top line
What top line?
On the chart.
What chart?
The one on the wall
What wall?
:eek:

OttoDaFe yes it is a joke. Developed in response to all the, how did you get Herpes in your eye questions.

Yup. The way it was explained to me is that I’m an alternator - I’m blind in one eye, then the other… but it happens so fast that I don’t notice it (they said it more neurological as opposed to being just a vision problem). The only times I’m really conscious of it is when I’m looking through binoculars (for some reason my vision just blanks out unless I shut one eye), or if I’m looking at a distant object, with another object much closer to me. My vision then starts jumping back and forth between the eyes until I change positions or make a conscious effort to focus on either the close or far object.

Another person living in a flat world here.

I don’t know what “3D” is, never having experienced it personally. I can tell the difference between 2D and 3D drawing or animation styles, but that’s the extent of it, and that’s a question of how the shapes are drawn and shaded. I can’t see 3D movies - if I happen to be subjected to one at say, an amusement park, I have to close one eye, and I’ll be the one sitting still while everyone else is ooohing and aaahing. (Or eeeeking and yikesing, depending on what kind of presentation it is!)

Right-eye dominant, and my left eye just provides some peripheral fill.

A few years ago, an opthalmologist that had some extra time in his schedule watched my eyes carefully, and apparently, they don’t “track” to the same vertical position. I don’t recall which eye is higher, but it’s enough that my brain gave up trying to assemble the images decades ago.

Oh yeah, please don’t toss something to me and expect me to catch it. I’m also predictably bad at parallel parking. Something else that messes with me is glass table tops - whether it’s an 80’s style coffee table or just a piece of glass laid over the tablecloth at a restaurant, I tend to bang things like coffee cups down into the glass pretty hard.

I learned at an early age how to force myself to alternately look out of both eyes to see where the dot was vs the box. An important skill, since the DMV uses those things. I have no idea what the “penalty” would be for failing that test - it’s not like blurry vision that can be corrected with glasses.

I’ve posted before about our oldest son, who appeared to us to be somewhat cross-eyed when he was very small. Turned out, he had number of minor problems with eyes, ears, nose and throat. One of the problems was what the eye doctors (I can never keep all of the op***ist specialties straight) called “lazy eye.” He had surgery on one eye to strengthen muscles on one side of the eye and bring it in line, but while his eyes do track together most of the time, he doesn’t actually see with both of them at the same time. He turns them on and off as he needs them. At least that’s what we were told. We went through all kinds of glasses, eye patches and exercises, even spent a year hounding him about using both eyes when he was reading. He sees perfectly from each eye, but has no depth perception. He wanted to be a three-sport athlete in high school, but basketball and baseball simply require binocular vision. So he excelled in football. He’s pretty philosophical about it, actually, and is quite successful; we don’t even think of him having a handicap.

That’s why I lead with my pinky when putting things down. My pinky contacts the surface first and then I can gently place the object down. It’s as natural to me as anything else I do, but it must look odd to people who notice me doing it.

The worst misjudgment I can remember is one time when I was running to second base and I had to slide. I slid about ten feet too early and stopped well short of the bag (luckily the throw was wild so I wasn’t tagged out). Nobody ever slides that early, and nobody who saw me do it could understand that the problem was in my eyes. They didn’t let me forget that one for quite a long time.

I got to reading this after editing time expired. I don’t mean to offend anyone, and if lack of depth perception isn’t really a handicap … well, I guess that’s what I meant. When we talk to other people about it, they consider it a handicap, but he’s adapted to it so well that it isn’t really a handicap for him, and it appears to not be one for anyone on this thread.

Gus, as far as sliding into second is concerned, I tried to steal second head-first in a geezer softball game several years ago, ended up dinging myself badly on the base when I overshot it. I rolled off, curled up in pain, and got tagged. I never tried to slide again. At least you had an explainable reason – mine was just plain dumbassedness. :smiley:

I remember my childhood eye doctor giving me a depth perception test. (I think I was a teenager.) Part of it involved looking at various printed images. One was a greatly-enlarged image of a housefly. The doctor told me to pinch the fly’s wing. The image was supposed to be 3D, and I guess the doctor expected me to pinch somewhere above the page, where I perceived the wing to be.

Because I saw the image of the fly as 2D, I didn’t even understand the question. My doctor was very irritated with me and treated me as though I was dense.

Sounds exactly like me (minus the ears/nose/throat issues and the otherwise-perfect vision [lucky!]).

The surgery - and this is somewhat gruesome - doesn’t strengthen the muscles as much as shortens some of them. They cut the muscle on the side that the eye drifts away from, cut a bit of it off, and reattach the shortened muscle so it pulls your eye in that direction. I was only an infant the first time I had it done, but then I had it done again, and I can assure you that it’s even less fun to go through than it sounds like (plus, it makes your eye look like a prop from a horror movie).

Amblyopia (lazy left eye), anisometropia, and strabismus. I got me some fucked-up eyes here, children. No 3-D, and no, I never could see those damn pictures.

ETA: Ah yes, the fly. I just put my fingers right on the plate and pinched at the image printed there. That was the only sense I could make of that. Happily, Dr. Shuckett never yelled at me over it (seriously, WTF?)

I have stereovision but my sister doesn’t. I can’t hit a baseball to save my life and I had a hell of a time learning to land a plane at night. Almost didn’t get my license. Found out if I lean forward I change visual perspective enough to grease the landings.

And I have a friend who has monovision, and he collects… Stereoviews.

I can’t close my right eye independently. Never could. But I’ve no other problem, no lazy eye, no lack of depth perception, etc… So, it’s probably unrelated. Or at least, it’s not necessarily related.

That is exactly what my response is. 20/400 in both eyes, astigmatism and myopia. I can see the Magic Eye pictures (and I can reverse them, so they look like hollow shells that I am seeing from the back or reality) and have some binocular vision, but only up close. The farther away stuff is, the flatter it all seems. My ophthalmologist says that is more because of my prescription then my eyes. But since I can only see clearly for 6 inches without my glasses, I effectively have no binocular vision at any distance.

I have darn near perfect vision, but don’t “get” 3D movies or magic eye pictures. Have glasses I don’t need to wear (yet) for both distance and reading.

My son, with glasses, astigmatism, lazy eye - he see them just fine.

Hey does anyone else get that thing where when they look at certain patterns, it appears to be shifting or buckling? 1x1 black & white checkerboard floor tile does this for me… Honestly I could stare at it for hours, kind of like watching a fire or the ocean. I think its my left and right eye competing for dominance, or maybe attempting to focus on the same thing.

Anyone else?

crickets