so do you need to wear glasses in vr should you
wear glasses for far away for your distance should you wear glasses for close-up should you wear
bifocals progressive lenses should you be wearing contact lenses these are all questions that i get
all the time and so i wanted to do an in-depth video talking specifically about vr the optics
of vr how you should be wearing your glasses and hopefully i'll answer a lot of these questions
as i get into it so let's focus in i'm Dr. Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, and i have a channel
where i try and keep your vision healthy and your eyes healthy vision clear and if you've seen me
before if you've seen any of my videos i've done a lot of videos about vr and vr and eyes and so if
you have let me know let me know in the comments or in the chat right now let me know where you're
from but also if you have any questions during this presentation also let me know i'll see if
i can answer them after the the presentation here but yeah so i'm i am actually an eye doctor a
full-time eye doctor in idaho at summit i care but i also have this youtube channel specifically
to help people out let's get right into it so the big thing that i'm going to go over and we're
going to get a little sciency here we're going to talk a little bit about math and optics but this
will kind of help us understand optics of vr and we'll also go over prescriptions so you'll
be able to read your glasses prescription to so you can know if you need to wear glasses in vr
but let's kind of get uh let's lay the ground work first so this is kind of an example exactly how vr
works or not vr works this is how your eyes work your optics of your eyes work now this is
someone this is an example of someone that has perfect vision they don't need glasses they
don't need contact lenses with this person when they're looking in the distance they see
it clearly they have light rays coming in from the distance the eyes do their own thing and
they focus it perfectly back to the retina and you see a clear image now when you go to look up close
say for example if you're looking at your phone hi silky city pete connecticut sorry i just saw
your comment howdy if you're looking at your phone and it's a little bit different so you guys
actually have to work they have to focus on your phone the light rays coming into your eyes
are from a different angle and so when they come into your eyes your eyes have to focus using the
sil the the lens of your eye the crystalline lens and this is how it focuses up close now the
real question is okay is this how it's done in vr should you know when we have vr really close
to our eyes our eyes having to focus really hard now you can actually test this out if you take
your own phone and you look at it really really close i mean really close to your eyes and try and
watch youtube or something it's going to be tricky if you watch it for about 30 minutes either
you're gonna it's gonna be completely blurry or you're gonna get a crazy headache and
that's because your eyes are having to focus so hard some people won't even be able to do
it and so what they've done to help this issue if they've actually put a lens inside of
the vr device that changes the light rays so without this lens you'd have really narrow angles
of light coming in your eyes would have to do the focusing power well they put the lens in there
to do the focusing power and it changes the light rays going into your eyes so now the light rays
are coming from the distance so now your eyes they don't know any they don't know any difference
all all they know is they're focusing light rays that are coming from the distance and so that's
where that image comes from is you're actually looking far away in vr so it's kind of kind of
weird and that's where it kind of gets confusing so in this example so if you're looking at a tree
in vr the light rays will change the focal point out in the distance and we're going to use the
oculus quest 2 metaquest 2 for this example the focal point is 1.3 meters or four feet out
and so you're actually your eyes are focusing or thinks it's looking at something four feet out
and so this is where it gets weird we're going to brush over this i know we're looking at math
here but if you wanted to figure out what the the diopter power this is diopter math so this is
going to help us to know what your prescription or if your glasses prescription what the focal point
is or what the focal point of your eyes are yeah by bifocals duane yeah bifocals so we'll get into
that i'll explain exactly what bifocals are here so the in the oculus quest 2 the once you
do all the diopter math it comes out to 0.75 diopters and this number will be important once
we start looking over your glasses prescriptions if you have your glasses prescriptions handy
definitely pull it out and so because i'll have some examples on here so i'll kind
of help help you out to kind of go over it go over with me here so focal point 1.3 meters
out 4 feet or in diopters it's .75 diopters so this is where it comes in handy so who
should wear glasses in vr and this is where we want to know what is your prescription
what is your focal point of your eyes so now this is an example of a prescription yours
might look like this but this is an example of someone that is nearsighted and we're going to be
looking at these first two numbers right here so usually with nearsighted prescriptions you're
you have a minus number or a negative number in your sphere the sphere column of your
prescription right eye is OD left eye is OS and so this person their focal point of
their eyes once we do all the math and you can figure this out too if you go one
divided by that number so in this in this case it's uh negative two you can just use two and
this will give you your focal point of your eyes this person their eyes are perfectly focused at
1.67 feet or 0.5 meters so now if you compare that to someone that's in vr so vr is four feet out and
if you can only see one point six seven feet are the seven feet out then you're yeah your your
vision it's gonna be blurry in vr and you're gonna be wanting you're going to want to wear glasses in
vr so now let's take someone that's far sighted so this is a plus number usually usually a
plus number in that first column there and that person it's a little bit different than
being nearsighted someone that's farsighted they do great far away the closer things get the
harder their eyes have to focus now someone that's a plus two when they're looking far away even when
they're looking far away their eyes have to focus by plus two that's the demand of their eyes to see
clearly so the person that's walking around with a plus two prescription even if they don't have
glasses on they're focusing their eye muscles all day long in order to see a clear image
and so it's a little bit different compared to vr you have that person that's at a plus two
now the focal point is that is at uh four feet so the the diopters is actually added to
their demand so they had a plus two demand now they have a 0.75 demand i know math is
getting weird but now that person is a 2.75 demand so they that's how much they have to
focus their eyes in order to see clearly in vr now astigmatism this is the second uh or the
the second and third column of your prescription so if you have numbers in this area in the
red box then likely you have astigmatism and they could be a negative or a plus number
depending on if you go to an optometrist or an ophthalmologist there's different ways of
writing the prescription but this person also a little bit different here they actually have two
different focal points so they they might have a focal point that's at that minus 2 the 1.67 feet
and a focal point that's in that's at infinity so a certain section of their eye they usually say
a meridian of their eye is perfect and then one section of their eye is nearsighted or they
have a different focal point and this makes it tricky for the eyes to know where to focus
instead of seeing a single point or a single uh spot of light they'll see blurry edges sometimes
they see streaks coming off the lights it's hard to actually focus on that single point so
astigmatism can actually mess with all distances even far away close up just because the eye
doesn't know which focal point it needs to to focus on so it's kind of messes with everything
actually so here is a general rule that i'll go over of who should actually be wearing
glasses in vr if you're nearsighted nearsighted by a minus one or higher you likely
will benefit from wearing glasses in vr now if you're someone that has a 0.75 a negative 0.75
you're nearsighted you're good you're probably perfect in vr because your focal point of your
eyes is actually matching perfect with the oculus quest 2.
Now this is with the oculus quest 2 other
vr devices will have different focal lengths so you can actually look that up and check it out
but yeah with the oculus quest 2 if you're a .75 you're good you're matched up if you're a
minus one or higher that's when things will start getting blurry because your focal point is
closer than what is any nvr far sided i also use a plus one but this depends on the person because
really the older that you get the harder it gets for your eyes to focus for example if you're 10
years old and you have a plus two prescription that 10 year old can probably flex all day long
use their focusing muscles and probably not even get a headache they won't even know it it takes
that same you take that same prescription plus two and an 80 year old they can barely flex their eye
muscles 0.5 and so they'll have a much harder time things will be blurry they'll get headaches and so
this really depends on the person here but usually a general rule plus one across the board
they'll probably do better with glasses when they're playing vr now with the stigmatism i
used a minus 1.7 or 1.25 also kind of depends on the person here some people are more sensitive to
their astigmatism they might only have minus 0.5 and and and notice that it's really bugging
their eyes and they get headaches and so that person still might benefit but as far as
excuse me as far as a focal point standpoint 1.25 might be the cut off there that i'd say
yeah you probably want to wear glasses in vr now now let's talk about bifocals or
progressives so this is where it can get confusing if you're someone that wears bifocals
or progressive lenses that's someone that has two different prescriptions at the same
time so they have a distance prescription that they need to see clearly out far away
and they also have a close-up prescription to be able to see clearly uh with reading or
looking at their phone and so this is where it gets a little tricky because a lot of people think
hey that vr device is really close to my eyes or if you're in vr hey i'm looking at something
far away and then maybe a watch on the vr do i need to use my bifocals for that but yeah so if
you look at your prescription if you have an add power this is that that last column right there
with a near ad in that red box if you have an ad power then you have another prescription
that you need for close up and so this person is probably wearing bifocals or progressive lenses
and so let's uh let's compare that so like i said if you're in vr looking at a tree remember
the trees focused the focal point is at 1.3 uh meters or four feet away now let's say in vr
if you go look at your watch and it's closer it's closer you see it closer but guess what that
watch also focused at 1.3 meters 4 feet away super weird now let's say you're going to look
at a mountain way out there in vr guess what that mountain is focused at four feet away so the
mountain the trees the watch it's all in the same focal plane of the eyes at four feet and that's
where it gets weird everything's focused at the same those light rays are the same no matter what
you're looking at in vr now the reason why we see depth perception is because the it's showing us
different angles of where those are coming from the watch will have a different angle coming
into your eyes the mountain has a different angle so your eyes are actually pointing at
different angles and this is kind of where the divergence accommodation conflict comes from
because your focusing muscles have to stay at one plane but your eye muscles are moving
back and forth to kind of see depth perception and it kind of wigs the eyes out wigs the brain
out a little bit and so that's where it gets confusing but yeah so in vr you actually don't
want to wear your bifocals or your progressive lenses you want to wear glasses for distance
or at least four feet away so now here's kind of like a rundown summary if you're going to
wear your glasses you want to use your distance prescription or if you're going to wear bifocal
progressive you're going to be looking through that top part of the bifocal because that's
what you use for looking in the distance here and it might be kind of annoying with the bifocals
and progresses because things will be kind of blurry when you look down underneath that bifocal
so if you have a separate pair of glasses then for distance then i'd probably wear those for sure
contact lenses definitely okay a lot of people actually prefer wearing contact lenses so you're
not dealing with glasses you want to wear distance contact lenses it's okay to wear multifocal
contacts if you have them you don't necessarily need them but definitely okay to wear them or if
you don't want to deal with that either there are vr lens prescription inserts that you can get
now a general rule that i usually tell people is if you can test this out if in real life you
wear glasses or contacts to look at something four feet away you can test this out try and
measure something 1.3 meters or 4 feet away and just see what it's like with and without your
glasses if you see it clear with your glasses if you feel better it's more comfortable with your
glasses your contact lenses then you will want to wear your glasses or contacts in vr and so that's
a good way to test it out if in real life you wear them then in vr you're going to want to wear
them too for that that four feet that 1.3 meters so uh the other thing i wanted to mention is
if you do want to order a vr prescription lens inserts they're going to ask for your glasses
prescription like we just went over and you're going to want to give them your distance
prescription if you have a prescription for distance lenses or near lenses you want to
give them the distance numbers now there are a couple exceptions to this there are some
companies that um they might ask you for your ad power that's that that last one for presbyopia if
you have bifocals and the reason why for this if you're a two or greater they could possibly adjust
your distance prescription they might adjust it by that 0.75 that that that that demand that's in vr
just to make things more comfortable now this may not be uh necessary again you can test it out
look through the top part of your bifocals or progressives and if you see four feet out and it's
not straining and it's clear then then you're good but if you feel like oh wow that you know it feels
like i have to strain or use my my eye muscles a little bit too much that i want to then you could
give them give them your prescription with your add power and they could adjust that a little bit
just to make things a little bit more comfortable now if you haven't i have haven't seen i've done a
few videos on vr prescription lens companies i did a review on four of them and a few companies that
have actually sent me out their new designs where i've been able to review them which has been nice
they've actually given me coupon codes and i'll put that in the link in the description as well
if you're wanting to look into that and also i'll have an ebook coming out just to download kind of
how to free it's almost done not done quite yet but i'll have that in the description as well and
i'll kind of go over a lot what's in this video vr optics how to read your prescription but
i'll try and highlight the pros and cons of the different vr lens companies and i'll
try and keep it update up to date because they are coming out with new designs and
they'll be new vr devices and everything but uh but yeah so um i i hope i hope this helped uh
a lot again i get these questions all the time but yeah i just wanted to thank you thank you for
watching my other videos thank you for thank you for watching this video it's actually been
a really fun it's been actually a blast to make these videos and and talk with people answer
questions it's kind of like the perfect mesh of hobby and profession and optics for me so it's
actually it's actually been a fun actually so anyway so uh thanks for joining me i just wanted
to check in with the comment section here um yeah dwayne oh hey we hey we got your
uh your question answered oh good um good i'm glad i'm glad that that worked out
that's that's good yeah uh lest that dk says i'm farsighted and can see fine doesn't see any
difference with or what without glasses in vr yeah so see that's a good point i'm actually i'm
actually glad that you actually said that because um like i said some people depends on how old you
are depends on your prescription of how far sided you are they they can see just fine even without
glasses they can actually accommodate that's what accommodation means they can focus through their
prescription and see clear as day clear as someone with perfect vision they just have to use their
focusing muscles to see okay and so that person if they're not getting headaches not not blurry
not causing eye strain that person could do just as well in vr so it kind of just depends
on on the person there yeah you're 48 yeah so you're so you're actually doing pretty good you're
far sided and 4 and 48 yeah that's pretty good um some people might notice a long like if they're
playing vr for a long time we're talking like you know two three hours which you know you got
to take breaks if you've seen my other videos use that 20 20 20 rule uh they'll they might
notice more eye strain because if they're having to focus on a little bit more of a demand
not wearing glasses and they're far sided they might notice more eye strain than the
next person but again depends on the person what about the quality of the lenses so are you
talking about the quality of your glasses lenses are you talking about the quality of vr lenses
or the vr lens prescription insurance uh i guess that's a loaded loaded question i think you're
talking about the vr prescription lens inserts the ones that i've tried the quality of lenses
a lot of them have been actually great in fact all of them have actually
surprised me on how well they are if you've seen a couple of my videos the snap-on
ones like uh rel optics and vr wave they're super convenient and they've actually made them really
thin thin compared to the other push-on ones those ones i actually like a lot because it's
really convenient you put it on once and you can just take it right off and they're thin
enough now that they don't really bug me or bump into my huge noggin of a nose and so uh but
the lenses themselves they're they're ar coding their blue light protection coding have
all been great vr wave actually has a really cool protection coating on there as and
i like it a lot but really i've liked them all glasses versus vr inserts gotcha okay yeah so um
glasses uh typically will depends on where you get them but typically will have a great quality
hopefully hopefully if you're getting your glasses but the vr prescription lens inserts uh also
uh really great uh compared to glasses in fact some of the vr lens prescription inserts are made
out of the same type of material the same type of lenses that you'll find in glasses and so really
the quality of the lenses are really comparable to the quality of your your glasses prescription
now what some things people that might run into is sometimes they'll they'll run into maybe
some distortion on the edges with some of their prescription lenses i think that depends on how
big your prescription is and what type of material they that they used if they used a plastic or a
high index thinner material so sometimes people run into that that they don't have with their
normal glasses and so that's something to consider but overall i would say they're really comparable
to your your glasses that you might have right now my doctor doesn't even want me getting warby
parker oh yeah hey i don't either no just kidding no yeah it will it will depend on the person so
someone that might have a higher prescription higher astigmatism might require better
lenses better lens material higher index uh thinner lenses maybe trivex it has a better
clarity and so when you get into those with higher prescriptions it really does it really does depend
on the person and that person's prescription so yeah so definitely i mean definitely
listen to your doctor for sure uh okay any idea why my optometrist won't give
me my prescription they tell me it's expired but it's still fine usually oh okay yeah so they uh
if it's not expired they're required to give you your prescription they they have to but yeah once
it's expired they they they can't give you your active prescription um as it's active they but
they can they can give it to you as a printout like sometimes we'll give a print out of someone's
prescription as a history it'll probably stay like expired on there or you can get out get your
records from your optometrist and it should have your prescription on there but they they
can't give you an active prescription that you can use to to buy glasses unfortunately so that's
kind of linked in with getting your eyes checked and everything like that even if your prescription
doesn't change but you should still be able to get what your numbers are with your your uh yeah your
record of your exam your exam record they could just print out your prescription it might say
expired on there probably depends on the person okay uh visual aid enough now
that my prescription is fine still wow that's good so people say not wearing
your glasses makes your eyes worse but in vr my glasses move around way too much am i damaging
my eyes if i choose not to wear my glasses in vr okay so it depends on your prescription now when
we say not wearing your glasses will it make your eyes worse your prescription worse uh
not necessarily so let's take someone that is nearsighted they're minus four so their focal
point is going to be you know right here if they go around and they are not wearing their glasses
i mean their vision is going to be blurry they're probably going to be doing a lot of squinting
so they're going to get eye strain they could get headaches but as far as is that going to
make your prescription worse or all of a sudden you're going to go next year to your eye doctor
and then is it going to be like a negative 6. no not not necessarily there's there's no
link to not wearing your glasses and making your prescription worse but it could lead to eye
strain and and headaches and stuff like that so if you're not wearing your glasses in vr same
principles apply you could be getting eye strain headaches you might be squinting but as
far as like making your eyes worse in vr so far there's no studies that can show
that it will make your prescription worse now now a side note if you have crazy
astigmatism i i would say i would still wear your glasses because you know you you will
be that person will be squinting quite a bit and sometimes they there there have been some links to
squinting or eye rubbing a lot of squinting could make or contribute to making your astigmatism
worse astigmatism is all about the curve of your eye and so if you're squinting the idea is
that that squint that pressure on the eyes could could be contributing to that curve some studies
show that there's not a link to that but so there are some studies that might show that it
could cause it to to get a little bit worse so if you have quite a bit of astigmatism then i'd
consider at least looking or into wearing glasses and if the glass is really buggy inside vr
i mean you can look at contacts if you can or yeah like i said look at the vr prescription
lens inserts super nice way better than wearing glasses um in vr you don't have to deal with you
know putting the headset on and your glasses and taking it off it's just right on the lenses
for you and yeah it doesn't doesn't get in the way especially with the new designs out now
they're they're they're really good yeah um wow you guys had great questions see this is
why this is why i like the comments from people because i realize when people make comments in my
videos that i oh man i should have put that in my video or my presentation because they're they're
such good questions so yeah so this is why i like uh the comment section is because they fill in
the gaps that i should have put in the video um okay ups in oculus settings what ups am i am
i oh man i oh my gosh i'm going to feel stupid right now is this should i know this term ups or
like is this increasing the oculus settings no i don't uh what does that mean
oh my gosh sorry i'm sorry hey amazing haven't i doctor who uh this vr's
fan i've been spraying the word hey hey thanks uh thank you uh baltier that's super nice of you
super appreciate it it's it's been fun it's it's fun uh and yeah thanks thanks for for joining me
that it's awesome thanks for the comment there oh ibis ipd settings and oculus oh gotcha uh yeah
so um ip settings so i go over that in another video super important to line up that sweet spot
in the video that will definitely improve the clarity in vr now i will go in over another video
a lot of people have been asking me about prism in glasses or vr prescription lens inserts
improving your fov your field of vision but also improving the limitation like the
oculus quest 2 has of of the limited ipd settings and it's looking like the prism actually could
work now i'm still kind of on the fence of if i should recommend that just because i'm wearing
prism when you don't necessarily need prism might mess with the eyes give you eye strain
and so i'm still kind of looking into that but um yeah spell check yeah
no i knew it was something whoa hey aaron dr smith stone canyon eye show
what how oh you've been here hey okay sorry i how did i miss your comments hey this is dr smith
aaron smith my um good buddy we actually went to optometry school together he's also got a youtube
channel uh up and going his videos are better than mine so you should check him out stone canyon
i show his videos are a nice professional fast whereas i tend to ramble on as you
can tell in this video we're all at already at 28 minutes so sorry but yeah his uh if
you like my videos you'll you'll like his for sure about about the eyes but uh yeah so hey thanks
for uh the questions everybody again even when i'm done with this video if you have any more
questions definitely leave in the comments i you know i sit here on my phone or the computer
and i try and answer all the comments that i get i'm sure i miss a lot of them but i'll try my
best to answer any questions that you have like i said this is this is fun for me so this is fun
your questions are fun so don't don't feel like you're a hassle or anything it's it's actually
a lot of fun um okay but yeah thanks again uh make sure that you uh uh definitely
uh leave comments if you need to if you have any questions but um yeah i'm
Dr.
Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, stay focused.
