Low vision glasses for shooters?

A lot of people have "floaters", fuzzy things that seem to swim around in your eye, blurring your vision, or worse.  I've had them for a long, long time, after I had what's called a "vitreous detachment".  What it means, is when it's between the front sight and my eye, the vision of the front sight gets blurry.  I guess I'm lucky - if I flick my eye to a different place, then come back, the floater has moved out of my line of sight for a second or two.  If as was noted in a different discussion, I should be able to see the tiniest scratch on my front sight, it's hard.

I volunteer at an eye hospital in India, and I had a thought - can I get a pair of glasses that would enlarge the front sight.  One of the doctors said sure, they are prescribed for people with low vision.

After a little searching, I found this:
https://www.virginialowvision.com/telescopic-glasses

My question to the forum is whether anything like this is legal for bullseye shooting?

Enlarging my view of the front sight would compensate for it being slightly blurry, if a device like this was allowed.  I'm not about to buy one, but some people get floaters far worse than what I'm dealing with......

Mike, this is a very interesting topic - I also suffer from floaters - they can be a real pain, especially in TF/RF where there is little time to "blink them away".

I took a quick look at the telescopic glasses site - interesting - but, IMHO, really, really scary! I often come across very elderly people with seriously impaired vision driving on the roads, I've witnessed a couple of really near misses in town recently. Then I see these devices which massively narrow one's field of view and see them being recommended for driving - that makes me frown - I hope that those users take extra, extra care when at inter-sections and lane changing. SCARY!

Well, there's no rule against magnification, in your scope or, I guess, in your spectacles. But I can't imagine it will improve things!

I have floaters too, and a flick of the eye clears them for me as well. I recommend coping with them that way, assuming it gives you enough relief to do the deed.

Greetings,

Flashback...

Darius "Doc" Young had a magnifying eyepiece he attached to his glasses. This was back in the mid '80's. It was about 1 1/2" long, if I recall correctly.

I recall a Canadian Shooter, Jimmy Lee, looking at the attachment rather closely. (Jimmy was not bashful.) Doc merely ignored him. Further evidence of his ability to concentrate on the sights.

Thanks for the memory.

Cheers,

Dave

I’ve switched to left eye and right hand and it ain’t comfy.  Right eye dominant and floaters are crazy. Manageable in slow fire not so much in timed or rapid.  Eye flicking don’t work for me

(There are ways to get rid of the floaters, but the doctors here told me it's taking a needless risk.)

My thoughts that for steel sights, an enlarged image would make up for the blurred vision.  When I get to Madurai tomorrow, they have a full department at the hospital that deals with this.  I'll try to find out more.

Sorry for you....  I always wondered if there was a way to reposition the floaters, but then I thought I should leave "well enough" alone.  

Just a thought - if you switched to left hand shooting, with left eye, other than not being used to it, would you be able to see the sights better?


Just thinking out loud, we all have a post for a front sight, and an inverted U for the rear sight.  Maybe something else could be designed, to help people with vision problems.  If it was a small round "dot" inside a "circle", even if it wasn't as sharp as possible, that might help.  Centering something is easier than getting all the blades level on top, with the post mid-way between the rear sight edges.    Normal sights have been around forever.  That doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement for people with vision issues......

mikemyers wrote:  Maybe something else could be designed, to help people with vision problems.  If it was a small round "dot" inside a "circle", even if it wasn't as sharp as possible, that might help.  Centering something is easier than getting all the blades level on top, with the post mid-way between the rear sight edges.   

Been around for a while for pistol and shotgun...

https://www.cabelas.com/product/Dead-Ringer-Killer-Sight-Combo/1575692.uts?productVariantId=3440253&WT.tsrc=PPC&WT.mc_id=GoogleProductAds&WT.z_mc_id1=03636518&rid=20&ds_rl=1246555&ds_rl=1246558&ds_rl=1252245&ds_rl=1252079&gclid=Cj0KCQiA-4nuBRCnARIsAHwyuPpPG8G98OmlS0C3dXgQ7Txzf1hL722jtUL69jBBDhFlJhtz7T_zARQaAqPeEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Frequent an indoor range and you'll soon see everything ever made to "improve" your shooting!

Gee, that's pretty much what I was thinking of.

I wasn't thinking this concept was "to improve your shooting", but rather to help people with bad floaters be able to see well enough to aim.

When there's a "floater" between my retina and the sights, the front sight is blurry. Centering a dot with the sights like you posted would be possible even if that front dot was blurry.

Thanks for posting - if I had a way to try those, I would.

Fortunately though, for me, if I flick my eye away and back, the floaters move away, and slowly float back to where they were.  That gives me a little time in which to shoot.  But that's me - if the floaters never moved away, as in the earlier post, that "short time to shoot" doesn't happen.

I used to get a lot of floaters until I had cataract surgery, I didn't notice them as much then. Earlier this year I had those multifocal lenses removed and went with single focal lenses, because I had nothing but trouble with the other ones. Now, I don't notice them floaters, but my true test is in the winter on a bright sunny day with lots of snow on the ground. Those conditions are when I noticed the floaters the most.
 Stan

The way my eye doctor explained it to me is the humour inside the eye is a kind of gel, which becomes more liquid with age. This allows floaters to become more mobile, which both makes them more visible, and allows them to move out of the way somewhat. They can come and go with hydration and depending on your head position, visual field, etc. Unpredictably. Good news about the change to liquid is that distance vision improves, btw.

I've had floaters all my life, and developed a few more after the PVDs you describe. When I had the first PVD, and mentioned the new ones, the doctor smiled and said "welcome your new friends". As in, definitely not worth the risk of doing anything about them. Good news about PVDs is that they're mostly one-and-done, for each eye.

You might try hydration and saline drops. Its not a cure but I found it does help.

mikemyers wrote:I wasn't thinking this concept was "to improve your shooting", but rather to help people with bad floaters be able to see well enough to aim.

It was just a comment about the things I see there, not really related to your topic.

I was asked to try someone's Glock 19 with a set on it (that they did buy to "improve") and found them to be a bit "busy" after being used to standard iron sights. I didn't have your proposed purpose in mind at the time though. They may have some merit there though, somewhat like a mechanical dot scope if you keep everything concentric...

Wow, you said it far better than I did!!

"a mechanical dot scope"


:-)

The problem with any magnification is the perceived motion with movement. If the magnification is on the eyeglasses, the motion will be in the opposite direction of the head movement.  For instance, if the head turns right, the objects seen will move to the left. This may be very distracting.

Before the use of IOL for cataract surgery, eye surgeons essentially removed the lens and the patients must afterwards deal with very thick plus eyeglass lenses in the magnitude of +10 to +15 diopters. This was the norm before the 1970's and some of you may remembered your parents, grandparents and great grandparents with these thick and heavy eyeglasses.

If we use a pistol scope with magnification, movement of the scope to the right will show the target moving to the left and vice versa. This will also pertain to vertical movements.

With such a steady hold, Doc Young used 2x scopes, as I recalled discussed in the original Bullseye-L.  Unfortunately, there are no archives to retrieve old discussions.

PVD stands for posterior vitreous detachment which may sound alarming, but this is common.  The vitreous humor gel inside the eye liquefies as we age which changes our eyes and prescriptions.  A nearsighted individual will become less nearsighted, however a farsighted individual will become more farsighted.  So yes, a nearsighted person's vision will get better but not the farsighted person.

Some of our senior shooters may think herbal supplements may have improved their vision, but in reality it was caused by normal aging.

Cataracts has been a frequent topic here and this will also change our vision, opposite of vitreous changes discussed.  A nearsighted person will become more nearsighted and the farsighted individual will become less farsighted.  These vision prescription changes can be quite pronounced as I have been experiencing firsthand.

My recommendation to patients/shooters has always been to keep your older eyeglasses because your vision can shift back to your Rx of 10-15 years ago.

You can find telescopic glasses on Amazon for $16 with a 2.1x magnification.  That seems like a pretty inexpensive experiment to run to see if they work for you.

Basically, there are a small Galilean telescope, where you use a strong positive diopter lens, set in front of a strong negative diopter.  This is essentially the same way that the 'adjustable focus' rear sights from Gehmann and Centra work.  You get two benefits:

1.  They magnify.  I have no experience with floaters, but if that is a help for you, it is worth it.
2.  They have adjustable focus.  By changing the distance between the + and the - lenses, the effective focal length of the pair changes, so you can actually tune the focus for what you like.

No idea if these are legal, or even practical, but $16 is a reasonable experiment.

Hmm, I started looking around....  Thanks!

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=telescopic+glasses&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

To work as I described, they would need to focus on the front sight and magnify it.  Maybe these would be a better choice for my floaters?

https://www.amazon.com/Magnification-Readers-Reading-Glasses-4-00-6-00/dp/B01LXR90JE/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=magnifying+glasses+for+reading&qid=1573784186&sr=8-5

No, those will not work.

With a single lens solution, magnification and focal length are intrinsically linked.  So while the glasses you found, in the +4 to +5 diopter range will magnify things, they will put your focal point at about 8-10" from your face.  I have glasses like these and LOVE them for finding small splinters in my finger, or for working on really tiny stuff, but you cannot shoot with them, the target, and even the front sight would be hopelessly blurred.

The twin lens solution of these telescopic glasses is that you can dissociate focus from magnification, so you get a 2x or 4x magnification, but can still adjust where your focal point falls, by adjusting the distance between the two lenses, so you can put your focus between the front sight and the target.

Art