P3D Re: wide eyed viewing (was slow loading)

[Larry Berlin <lberlin@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 
>Gabriel Jacob  writes:
>.............
>
>>Larry Berlin writes,
>>Actual skills to freeview in parallel vary widely. ..................
>
>I wholeheartedly agree with Larry's points but I don't know how rare it
>"really" is. I think anyone can, with practice, freeview quite wide images.
>I speak from experience when I say that as a committed cross-eyed
>freeviewer, I found it extremly hard to parallel freeview even standard
>stereocards. But after months of on and off practice I finally got it.
>It took concerted effort physically and mentally, consciously thinking
>of what I was trying to do. Sort of like Zen meditation! ;-)
>Eventually I was able to freeview parallel and then wall-eyed images
>spanning the the full 10 inch width of the monitor, from a comfortable
>distance of about 3 feet. Even closer depending on the infinity points. 

*****  There are several issues here to be considered. It is rare to
parallel view wider than the interocular by statistical analysis, according
to other authorities. I have no interest in conducting such a survey myself.
One particularly important part of the situation is how much of this
wide-eyed viewing is considered to be healthy and when does it become a
health risk? According to all too many people, with no experience at all,
*any* form of freeviewing is considered *dangerous*. I can't agree with that
conclusion, but have had a number of involved discussions with persons who
had and still hold that belief, even though it's an unreasonable and
unfounded belief.

There probably is some point beyond which you could damage your eye muscles
by trying too hard. My personal experience supports that view, so I'm
cautious with such things. Recommending that it's OK to stretch your eyes
and parallel view an entire monitor screen from only a couple feet distance,
could cause damage, so I won't recommend it. If you have that ability or
some others can do so doesn't negate the potential danger to those who can't
do the same thing. I agree that with practice and persistent effort such
things can be learned, and maybe even learned in such a way as to negate the
dangers.

I started freeviewing by using ONLY parallel viewing. After several years of
using parallel viewing, I had determined that I could view a bit wider than
interocular distance, but not by a lot. I didn't force it beyond what was
comfortable. By comparison with lots of other people with whom I talked and
explored stereo viewing, I discovered that my ability to go wider than
interocular seemed rather unusual. Later, when I started using parallel
viewing for greater lengths of time, I found that I had an increasing period
of time after each of these sessions where I had difficulty getting my eyes
to converge normally for things like reading (rather a scary moment). I
realized that parallel viewing was only strengthening the eye muscles
associated with going wide-eyed. Those muscles were getting too strong by
comparison to other muscles and it took time for them to relax and normal
vision to be restored.

My solution was to devote time and considerable effort to learn
cross-viewing. In the end I learned cross viewing and my difficulties with
returning to normal vision disappeared. As long as I was exercising both
sets of muscles, they didn't develop out of balance with each other,
something that has to be a healthier way to approach the situation. I use
both techniques interchangeably now. I do both for the exercise, but since
crossed viewing inherently allows viewing of ANY sized image, I find it much
more satisfactory overall than parallel viewing. I avoid doing either method
to the point of feeling stress.

Larry Berlin

Email: lberlin@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.sonic.net/~lberlin/
http://3dzine.simplenet.com/


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