Want to see a flat world in 2D, without depth perception? Try it.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I thought of a quick way for people without eye problems to see how people like me with strabismus&amblyopia see the world, in 2D and without depth perception, so I’m interested how different it will be than your normal binocular sight and would doing things be harder. Simply take a piece of cloth, a scarf or something and wrap it so that you cover just one of your eyes, left for example, which is the weak eye in my case. Alternatively, maybe a bit trickier to do, but try to wrap it so that you can still see the very left periphery with your left eye, but so that most of your left eye is still covered (so that you can’t look forward, but can still see a small section to your left side)

I have a relatively rare condition called monofixation and that is basically strabismus (eye turn) and amblyopia (brain not accepting a part or entirety of the image from one of the eyes and instead replacing it with the other eye’s imagery), I can switch between my eyes to choose through which one I want to look, but I can’t look through both at the same time fully, at least not enough to form 3D depth, and my right eye is stronger, so 99% of time I see the world through my right eye, everything that is in front and right of me, even partially to the left of me (as far as the right eye can cover), except a small part of the left periphery (for which I still get imagery from the left eye) is seen exclusively through the right eye.

As a result of this, I have zero depth perception, I have trouble parking, staying in the middle of the road lane, carrying liquid foods like soup in a bowl (tilting), reading is hard since I switch my eyes and reread the same lines a bunch of times,etc,etc.

So, if you are willing to give it a go, try to do this just for 5 minutes or so and try to walk around your house, to play with your pet, to eat, to drink, to pour liquids in a cup, to throw a ball somewhere, to read… and then say whether you felt any difference or not. As I never experienced 3D I can’t tell whether this will work and if you’d see in 2D, since you see in 3D your entire life, so it might be in your memory to perceive things in 3D automatically, but I don’t know…it might work

2

I have strabismus. The way it feels to me is that I have one big eye (my right) and one tiny eye (my left). As a kid I was treated for lazy eye (ineffectively, since that wasn’t my issue) and I wasn’t properly diagnosed until I was 48. I always failed the test where they ask if the apple is on the table. Not only was there no apple on the table, I couldn’t see an apple at all.

I have no depth perception but it hasn’t affected me as severely as it seems to affect you. I think that I learned to heed all of the other visual clues to compensate. While I’m sitting here typing this I feel as if I could touch everything I see in front of me if I reached my arm out. Everything seems to be the same distance away but I know the the wall is several feet behind the monitor and there’s no way I could reach it. I may help that I’m myopic - the blurrier something is the further away I know it is.

I can drive perfectly well. I do have trouble reading because I can only see one word in focus at a time. It’s tiring to scan the lines since it’s so unnatural for me. 3D movies aren’t just a waste of money - they hurt my eyes. I was a good baseball player as a kid but I had to quit at 15 because the pitchers got much faster and I couldn’t follow the ball any more. It was dangerous because I couldn’t tell where the ball was. It could be a foot outside or almost hit me. I couldn’t tell the difference. One time I came up four feet short sliding into second base.

3

Does parallax do nothing for you? Binocular vision is not required for 3D perception of the world. I don’t believe that you don’t have vision issues, but perhaps you’re not accurately describing what 3D vision is?

4

Wait, is covering/closing one of your eyes a novel idea now?

5

I did the titmus test (at an eye doctor) and it showed that I have zero depth perception, I didn’t make up a online diagnosis.

Not sure what your issue is, but for me as a person without any 3D, I can’t know how it even looks, so if you see in 2D if you close your eyes (which is how it should go I guess), then instead of being mean for no reason, maybe you should be constructive and describe the difference, since that’s the whole point of my question.

6

I was just astonished that you so lovingly described the home invention of the eyepatch.

I’m not sure how I’d describe 3D to somebody who’s never seen it, much like I’m not sure how I’d describe “green” to somebody who only sees in black and white. The brain just knows that some things are further away, and incorporates that information into the visual image.

The fact that the 3D comes from binocular vision also means that some things get seen in 'partial vision - I’m looking past the edge of my monitor right and can see way more of the much-more-distant wall behind with my left eye than I can with my right eye. When I focus on the wall my view of the monitor splits, sliding to the left and right from each other and leaving a transparent image of the monitor over part of the wall. The brain actively tries to edit this out though, and when I focus on the monitor it can do so successfully so I don’t even notice that the wall is being seen two different ways - it just looks normal unless I try to focus on it too. (Trying to focus on it and the monitor at the same time sort of makes my eyes ache.)

That last paragraph has nothing whatsoever to do with 3D, mind you; just binocular vision.

7

How else are you going to get 3D perception?

8

I’ll also mention that I’ve gotten up close and personal with the difference between 2D and 3D recently, what with my acquisition of a 3D projector. Movies that I originally saw in 2D have much more, well, depth in 3D, resulting in a much more immersive experience. There’s definitely a difference. My mom in particular loves them.

My brother, on the other hand, doesn’t, because like you he doesn’t see in 3D. I don’t know one medical term from another but his problem is that from birth one of his eyes wasn’t aligned with the other. Steps were taken to correct this so he doesn’t look like Marty Feldman, but even so his brain has still essentially shut off his 3D vision for anything more than a foot or two away from his face. The effect of this, since he does have short-range 3D vision, is that 3D movies in particular don’t work for him - I haven’t discussed it with him in a while but I believe it’s because the glasses put the full 3D image within the range of his actual 3D vision, and his brain doesn’t know what to do with the input it gets. It’s actually worse than only seeing with one eye, apparently.

9

I’m remembering the conversation more - I believe my brother actually does see 3D movies in full 3D, which is such an alien way for him to see the world that he finds it distracting and unpleasant. It’s all about what you’re used to, I guess.

10

The brain relies on zillions of cues, from focus to perspective to parallax.

Regarding parallax in particular–that is to say, the fact that nearby objects move more than far away ones when there is a change in perspective–binocular vision is just one way of achieving that. You can also get a sense of parallax from bobbing your head, as well as simply moving through space. You get a little bit just from your eyeballs rotating around (since your pupil isn’t at the exact center of your eye).

11

I’ve been blessed and cursed with lack of depth perception since birth. I enjoyed wearing an eye patch in the second grade and then in the summer. The buildup of perspiration was annoying.

12

When I read Oliver Sacks’s description of his visual problems inThe Minds’s Eye, (and earlier in the book Stereo Sue) I found it interesting how much of an impairment he found loss of depth perception to be. It seems that some people are much more dependent on depth perception to derive spacial clues than others. When I close one eye, it has very close to no impact whatsoever on my ability to function normally in all ways. For me, at least, losing an eye would be barely an inconvenience at all.

13

This is exactly what I meant above. Your head is always moving, and there’s always parallax with one eye. Two working eyes helps me have a wider field of view and protects me from predators, but I’d be perfectly comfortable driving with one good eye. I’d have to exercise a bit more caution for the field of view issue, but depth perception isn’t affected at all.

I guess for me the best way to simulate lack of depth perception is with a photograph, using a long zoom lens, taken from far away, which kind of compresses depth. This isn’t at all the same as closing one eye, i.e., simulating the loss of one eye.

Like I also implied above, no disrespect to the OP, but I still fail to understand the lack of depth perception that he claims.

14

I’ve tried the OP’s experiment before, covering one eye with a hand while driving, and there is a sense of diminished depth perception, to the point where I could feel a degradation in driving performance.

However, I’ve had good binocular vision my whole life and so my brain has come to rely on it. The other cues are still there, just less emphasized. So I have no doubt that if I were to walk around with an eyepatch for a while, my brain would in short order start relying on these other cues more and leave me in roughly the same shape. It’s only the short term that would be a problem.

15

There are a number of cues beyond binocular parallax vision.

For example, the more distant something is the smaller it appears - of course, this requires you to have some knowledge of how large something is.

A near object can appear in front of a more distant object, so if your images of two objects overlap the the one you can see entirely is nearer and the partially eclipsed one is more distant.

There is some feedback from the muscles involved in focusing your eyes, which can give you a cue (very subtle, probably mostly subconscious) as to whether something is nearer or father.

For very distant objects, haze in the atmosphere is a factor, with more distant objects acquiring a blueish cast, or greying out as in fog, or some of both.

If you move your head around a bit (this is what birds do bobbing their heads) the objects in your view that move around more are closer, the ones that move less or not at all are more distant.

All of the above are what enable many people with vision in only one eye to do things like drive cars or fly airplanes safely. In addition, since human binocular vision is not very effective past around 50 or 100 feet these cues are also used by people with good vision in both eyes and normal 3D perception. However, not all one-eyed people are equally adept at these things (nor all two-eyed people), and brain processing also comes into play, another area where people vary. I’ll also point out that many of the above are more effective at greater distances than near one, so you can have a situation where someone can safely drive on the freeway with great skill yet is incapable of pouring a cup of coffee without spilling it. Binocular/parallax vision works best close up, the other stuff far away, and having really really good 3D perception means combining the two.

16

I don’t have completely flat vision but my depth perception is pretty poor (as diagnosed by an FAA flight surgeon, so it’s official). 3D movies actually give me better 3D images than what I get in real life. It’s alien to me, but in my case my brain actually can process it. Doing so is tiring, even exhausting, although it’s gotten better with time. When we first got the 3D TV my spouse would watch it for hours and hours, he didn’t really understand why after watching just one movie I’d want to lie down with my eyes closed for a bit, even take a nap. I was tired, it was a lot of work to deal with the input that I wasn’t used to. This has gotten better over time as my brain got more practice with that sort of input. Watching a 3D movie no longer tires me out.

All you folks who complain about how 3D movie tech doesn’t look real, it’s too flat, whatever - it is still better than my own vision. And while I compensate really well, there are some things that will just never happen - those “magic eye” 3D images will never, ever work with my vision, for example. One the other hand, 2D renderings of 3D objects is something I seem to process better than average, possibly because my own vision is “flat” so I rely less on parallax and more on other cues, which is how flat images give a 3D illusion.

Two really good things the spouse did when choosing our 3D TV was, first, making sure that the system and my vision would work together (not always the case), and two, making sure there was an option on the glasses so that someone with just one eye or with 3D vision problems could watch the movie in 2D while the rest of us did so in 3D. Made it much more useful and enjoyable for all.

17

I’ve got amblyopia. My depth perception is lousy. I swear up and down those damned “Magic Eye” pictures are a big fat hoax! Everybody stands around those things, going oooh, ahhh, and I’m there saying, “Huh?”
~VOW

18

The first thing the doctor said when he diagnosed my strabismus was “I bet you never see anything in those magic eye pictures”.

19

I am nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other, pretty much from birth, so far as I can figure out. Didn’t know it for a long time, as (my guess: not a medical diagnosis) apparently my brain figured out how to process the disparate images back and forth fast enough, back and forth, to not only provide depth perception but also giving me great acuity over much longer and shorter distances than many, if not most, people usually achieve. It took a mandatory eye exam to find out that I required glasses to correct each eye to the point where my vision was slightly worse than before. I was shocked to find out that, contrary to my experience, my vision wasn’t much better than everyone else’s. I could see things much farther away, and see more detail in close things, than everyone I knew.

Many years later, both eye conditions have progressed to the point at which there is no overlap, meaning there’s a spot a certain distance away where (uncorrected) neither my farsighted eye nor my nearsighted eye can see it clearly. Behind it and beyond it, sure. But not that spot, and I’m not sure how big the spot is.

Depth perception be damned. The problem is the people with good eyes who see the world as flat.

20

I lost binocularity years ago due to my complex, boring eye issues It’s been long enough that my brain has, docs tell me, rewired itself, so even if I could see equally well out of each eye, I wouldn’t see out of both of them.

My depth perception is seriously impaired. It is not, however, zero, and with all due respect toward and much empathy with the OP, his or hers isn’t, either. Zero depth perception would mean seeing the world as completely flat, with everything on the same plane. You’d be unable to determine distance at all, including your own distance from the windshield and your car’s distance from the vehicle in front of you. Driving would be impossible. So would walking.

Fortunately, as others have noted, binocularity is only one means of perceiving depth, and it doesn’t operate independently. I can’t do those stupid Magic Eye things, but I have a pretty good idea how far my sofa is from the chair in which I sit.