P3D Re: Curious eye defect

[roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (John W Roberts)]

>Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 07:44:15 -0700
>From: JNorman805 <JNorman805@xxxxxxx>
>Subject: P3D Curious eye defect

>     Yesterday I went to the eye doc for a routine checkup...
>...he gave me a test involving the use of polarized
>glasses and transparency overlays to check just how good my stereo perception
>really is.
>..."I've got news for you, " he said. "Your stereo perception is really 
>rather poor.  I'd suggest you get another hobby!"

>      As you can imagine, this was pretty amazing news to a person who always
>thought he had pretty teriffic stereo vision, and of course I have no
>intention of giving up stereo photography!  
>      But it got me to thinking.  Could it be that I really do have poor
>stereo vision, and the reason I like stereo images so much is that the
>slightly hyper quality of many such images allows me to see the world in three
>dimensions as people with normal vision see it all the time?  

>Jim Norman 

That's a possibility. Another possibility, if you've used a viewer a lot,
is that you've learned to ignore certain "false cues" when using a viewer
(for example apparent infinity differing from real infinity, and subtle
keystone issues), so that when you take the test, your brain goes into
"viewer mode" (as opposed to "real world mode"), so you actually perceive
depth (through a viewer) differently from the way a person who had not
used a 3D viewer. Perhaps you might want to try some "real world" depth
perception tests to see if that might be a factor.

[Disclaimer: I've never read any account of this happening - it just strikes
me that it might be a possibility.]

John R


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