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Comment by cr0sh | Hacker News Reader

I'm skeptical of #2 - because regardless of the optics, while the focus may be "at infinity" - your eyes are still actually focused on a screen mere inches from your face. This was a problem back in the 1990s - and it will always be a problem - because optics. It can't be good for the eyes (mainly eyestrain if anything).

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Your eyes can't distinguish between light coming in from really far away and light coming in from nearby that's been bent to appear as if it's really far away.

Could you elaborate? Although your eyes are receiving light from a source that is centimeters away, they are not focusing on an image centimeters away.

Not the OP but the problem is the fixed focal depth so if you are looking at objects closer or further away your eye focus remains the same but you have to change the vergence of your eyes. You go wall-eyed or cross-eyed. This is generally what gives you eye strain and the pause for thought in letting kids use too much VR. Solutions include using several different overlapped displays to render objects at different focal depths.

Hearing any mention of VR brings back memories of me trying out Mario's Tennis on the Nintendo Virtual Boy at Blockbuster Video back in the 1990s and then having a headache for the entire ride home.

The light is coming from an object inches from your face, but is the focal point of your eyes actually inches from your face?

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