Oof, sorry for the long delay. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of exciting updates. I’ve tried the glasses a few times in a few lighting situations hoping for something interesting to say, and the effect just wasn’t very significant. I certainly NOTICED an effect, but it wasn’t really different to me than just…looking through a slightly tinted lens.
At most, I’d say that some greens looked a little more visible and colors in general were a little more “poppy” but the distortion of other colors was equally noticeable. It really didn’t seem to help with the main symptoms of my colorblindness, which is having trouble distinguishing certain desaturated or dark colors. Overall, I found wearing them just slightly unpleasant because the artifical tint was always slightly distracting. All that being said, I COULD imagine them being useful in certain situations, like if I was editing photos and looking for things like purple fringing (a type of common distortion).
I also let my father-in-law try them out during a visit. He has similar deutan issues, but I think a little more severe. His experience wasn’t much different. I think he thought the effect was interesting and he wore them walking around outside for a few minutes, but it similarly wasn’t all that impactful.
Wish I had something more exciting to report. I was optimistic, but I’m ultimately not surprised based on what I know about how colorblindness works. I don’t believe it’s complete BS, since colors definitely do shift and I can believe certain contrasts would be enhanced, but I am pretty skeptical of the “life changing” videos out there.
Anyways, much overdue and I’m happy to pass the glasses on to any further curious parties.
Well, it looks like we’re 1 for 3 (or 2 for 4 if you count Isamu’s co-worker) on the glasses which is exactly why in the OP I didn’t want them to go to a child. I’ll send a PM to carnut and see if he/she is still interested in having his/her brother try them.
I don’t know that there’s reason to be skeptical of the “life changing” videos out there. I think it’s more likely a form of confirmation bias. Presumably, people don’t post videos when the glasses don’t work or the effect is minimal.
Perhaps I’m cynical, but I’ve seen too much astroturfing and too many people willing to playact in hope of going viral.
The reason I’m skeptical is because I DO see an effect; it just isn’t THAT kind of effect. It’s not providing a “new” experience, it’s just adding a little vibrancy to colors you can already see. I don’t really believe anybody would genuinely have the experience of putting them on and immediately feeling overwhelmed by emotion because it just isn’t that dramatic, and the positive effects were really only noticeable after a few minutes.
Believe me, I understand skepticism. Your experience sounds a lot like mine when I put them on. (I’m not color blind.) It did seem reminiscent of using a filter.
But this was Isamu’s experience and I know without a shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t astroturfing.
So I’m sure that some of the reactions are real. I just don’t know what percentage. At any rate, I appreciate the courage that you have shown in even being willing to try them. We’ll keep our fingers crossed for the next participant, if there is one.
Ah, I saw that the other day and commented on that video. I suppose it’s not definitive, but I always suspected there was a little “too good to be true” and “how does that work with eye physiology” for me to believe it. I could see it making colors easier to distinguish, but to make you see colors you couldn’t before – I just didn’t understand how that could work.
I, too, couldn’t figure out how any kind of filter would make someone see more colors. And it’s too bad because I was taken in by the “testimonials” tugging at my heart strings.
If a person has red/green colourblindness, it’s definitely possible to find a filter that will make the two colours different from each other - for example if you have (say) a red pepper and a green pepper that happen to look identical to a colourblind person, viewing them through a cyan filter will make the red pepper look darker than the green one, or viewing them through a magenta filter will make the green one look darker.
Filters like this might actually make it possible for a colour blind person to score better, or at least differently, on an Inshihara test, but not because they are perceiving more colours
The effect comes at a cost - if you’re looking at the world through a cyan filter, then there will be certain combinations of cyan and white, for example white text on a sky blue background, that look like a solid block of colour.
Ultimately, colourblindness is a compression problem in the first place - X number of colours perceived by a person with perfect vision are perceived as less than X number of colours by a colourblind person.
Adding a filter is adding further compression by restricting the total number of colours of light passing through, and merging more of the colours into a smaller number of pigeonholes. This can be done in a way that creates some surprising and potentially slightly useful results, but at the cost of less colour perception in total and in general - because that’s what any coloured filter does.
I think what kept a spark of skepticism alive for me was the primative nature of the device. ‘This one weird trick’ is always attractive but often doesn’t pan out.
There have been (and always will?) more recent developments in light stuff like evermore effective & efficient LEDs, active mirrors, imaging framerates & resolution, nonlinear materials, laser doodads, semiconductor dev stuff, virtual reality displays, AI processing.
However, traditional ‘glass’ optics are, as I understand it, solved and especially as the field pertains to human vision correction. There will be minor improvements in eyeglass materials for weight and scratch resistance, coatings & surface treatments for reflections, fogging and keeping clean and stuff. But the actual light bending and filtering is mostly undergrad level equations.
