Thanks for the link @wtg interesting stuff… also the possible research use cases (not discussed in the article) are interesting. Some of my colleagues do research thst uses eye tracking and you can only do it in a lab because you need big equipment. If you could do it just with a pair of glasses (and say, a smart phone app to record it) you could expand your research in so many ways!
Back to the article…
currently the thinking is that these will be priced not like bifocals (which you can buy in shops for under $10), but like consumer electronics, comparable with “a high-end iPhone” at first.
My progressive lenses are already expensive enough, I want the same vision quality for less, not more!
The use case, they say, is to make it easier for different segments of bad-vision consumers: for those who need to have glasses to see up close and far away, to have only one pair of glasses instead of carrying multiple pairs of glasses; for those who already use varifocals but have found those progressive lenses clumsy to use and wear; and, it seems, even for those who have in the past opted for laser eye surgery to correct their vision.
I am one of those people who needs to have two pairs of glasses: one pair with progressive lenses for general use and one pair with mid-distance single vision lenses for piano and computer. It’s a pain in the rear. But I can’t use progressive lenses at the piano, or at the computer for that matter, because the view area is too small. At the piano, my progressive lenses make it look like the keyboard is curving… and at the computer, my progressives require me to move my head up and down and it’s awful.
So the single vision lenses are great for vision, but if I’m on my computer in my office and someone comes to my door, I have to change my glasses…. Or if I’m at the piano, like in the recital last week, and I look up, I can’t really see the people in the audience clearly.
So that’s annoying. I suppose those cases make me a good candidate for some kind of autofocus lens, but I’m skeptical for now…
