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Comment by zimablue | Hacker News Reader

The only thing I can contribute to this is my experience of one-eyedness. I think people are probably more afraid of it than they should be, having had eyesight in two eyes till I was early twenties I can remember the difference. In terms of your daily life it's almost no impact, there are three things that for me are important.

Reduced spatial awareness on the bad side (duh), so you'll be slightly more likely to stumble a bit or bump into something and seem clumsy

Certain sports are much harder and you pretty much couldn't compete in them - almost any sport involving a ball. However this leaves lots of sports and I was fairly successful in grappling sports afterwards

Low level fear - I don't have a spare and being actually blind is obviously orders of magnitude more impact on your life.

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I had a friend who was only sighted in one eye... his only problems were no ball sports (like you) and depth perception made parking his big ass crown victoria harder than it should have been...

I don't drive- I had lessons and didn't find parking noticeably difficult, but was learning in a normal-sized car.

My fiancé can only use one eye at once due to a complicated condition, and also does not drive currently. I'm hoping for self driving cars to become a thing ASAP because having 2 kids and only one driver is quite taxing.

It's amazing you mention that, I have amblyopia, but I actually learnt about that name into my late twenties. I always had a lazy eye (had an operation when I was 4, but did nothing...), so that lazy eye never properly developed, it hava a vision of like 2/10. It only see the left far side, very blurry, so I have an almost 100% field of view, but that's about it.

It never bother me, except what you talked about, is some very particular tasks, some task like filling a glass of water can be challenging as I have no parallax, so no real depth of field. Sometimes I can't tell if your glass is right under my jug or not. Sports with ball, forget it, ping-pong and badminton was just impossible for me in high-school/college. Bumping into things happen often, and no 3D movies for me, also VR is a lot less appealing and immersive :(

My story is almost identical except my lazy eye is 20/20 and I wear one contact in the other

I have amblyopia in one eye too, try doing LSD or one of its semi-legal analogues. While on 300µg I was able to read with the lazy eye and got 3d vision. I was looking at a tree with lots of branches and suddenly it clicked. I retained 3d vision for about 2 weeks afterwards, progressively weaker.

Interesting experience. 3d vision really means depth is directly perceived in the same manner as width and height. Now I understand why so many people are afraid of heights.

Funny thing actually there are treatments for amblyopia and they consist of hiding your good eye while you're watching psychedelic/highly coloured images with your other.

Can't find the name of the company who do that, I did contact them, but mine was too severe to be considered for trials.

About the ball sport thing, you might find inspiring the story of Ian McKinley. He's a rugby player who got blind in one eye as result of a playing accident. He still competes professionally: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/behind-the-lines/2016/sep/...

My father was born with only one working eye. The only time it ever comes up is if you try to get his attention on his "bad" side and that we always avoid 3D movies.

Isn't a 3D movie with one working eye just a 2D movie? Unless you mean you'd rather not pay more since he won't be getting more out of it.

I have one eye. It's worse than 2d because you pay more, and have to wear ill fitting, uncomfortable glasses which obstruct the movie both with the frames and the lens. The glasses don't make it 3D for me, they just mean it's not blurry (mostly). And after all that I still get the privilege of a headache partway through the movie.

No 3d for me, thanks!

I also have only one functioning eye, and can attest to this. Going to a 3D movie is horrible, especially when you pay so much more for the ticket.

About the only other negative I've hit is I realized in my 30s that I can't seem to put a baseball hat on straight.

Perhaps you need a pair of 2d glasses? [1]

I haven't tried them and I have stereo vision so ymmv.

[1] http://www.2d-glasses.com

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