This is neat. Some issues I spotted: spot-0.png doesn't seem to be a Gabor stimulus pattern (see http://www.cogsci.nl/software/online-gabor-patch-generator), the "press F11" and "Click to begin" messages don't go away (and sometimes going fullscreen is impossible/undesirable anyway).
Heh, nice. Just a little feedback - I can select all purposely or by accident and it highlights the dots. Also, in FF on Win 7, the 'press f11' prompt won't go away. Thanks for the opportunity to get an idea of what this is about, though.
> "When a major league baseball pitcher throws a 95-mph fastball, only about 400 milliseconds—the duration of a blink—pass before the ball rockets over the plate. And a batter gets less than half that time to decide whether to swing, and where. Baseball"
Bah! That's not a knife. This is a knife: twitch FPS gaming. Quake Live at 250 FPS, refreshed at 144hz, with < 5ms RTT latency. Reaction times can be compared in almost individual milliseconds. I'll put the reaction times of the best Quake Live player (rapha/cypher/evil, whoever) against the best baseball player any day.
Interestingly, my vision is extremely good. I've often surprised people with how far I can see clearly. So screw this app: learn how to play a twitch FPS well: http://www.quakelive.com/
Keep in mind that the ball is coming straight on, and the batter must discern trajectory (rising, falling) and spin (which affects how the ball curves) and velocity quickly enough that you still have time to move the bat.
For example, a fastball and a changeup both drop at the same rate and spin at the same rate. One is coming at 100mph, the other at 75. Since the ball is heading straight for you, you must perceive speed by measuring how quickly the ball is moving through your eye focus.
Worse, you are expected to bat in an intentional direction. Meaning that you have to hit the ball on an precise spot in the sphere with an intentional amount of force. It's not enough to just swing hard. I'd guess the bat has to be in the right location with a time accuracy of less than a millisecond.
This app specifically improves clear vision at farther distances, which seems far more useful on a daily basis, especially since a lot of people don't have good vision. Compared to twitch games that only improve reaction time in a very limited practically applicable scope. Considering the small amounts of time investment necessary to get good results, this app seems much more useful than playing quake.
For anyone wondering about the (bad) ratings in the iOS App Store: I bought this yesterday for an iPad mini.
I think the app must use web-based resources, and their site was slammed yesterday. I could do nothing but give it my name, and then it would go to a black screen and sit there -- no feedback, no activity, for minutes. I was left thinking I had wasted my money.
Today the app loads and runs successfully. The interface is bad. Really bad. Text-overlapping-other-text-and-graphics bad.
The controls are iffy. You're supposed to tap various images but sometimes the taps are off by an inch or more.
Nevertheless, it seemed to do pretty much what it is supposed to. It concluded my first session, congratulated me, and died. I checked and it saved my progress, so there's that.
I'm not totally put out since I got to do the exercises, and it seems plausible that it might help my mediocre vision. I hope the usability, design, and load issues are fixed soon.
Ugh, their website doesn't even explain what platforms it works on. Their home page, about page, and FAQ don't mention it at all.
Their purchase page has mysterious Apple and Windows icons, with a message saying "Is Now Available on the iPad".
But is there a Windows version, which the Windows icon would suggest? Or is it Windows Phone? OSX version? Web version? It says "Available on the App Store", but on my iPhone I can't find it.
And if it's only available for iPad, it doesn't even make sense that the site has a purchase page.
There is an OS X version. I'd assume there is also a Windows and an iPad one. I bought it earlier today and did the first session. It was fun. My eyes felt weird for the first few minutes after finishing the session.
This kind of reminds of playing Tribes in the early days. I was a sniper and would hang out in the mountains, monitoring miles of terrain and waiting for the slightest pixel of movement so I could zoom in to the max and nail it with the laser gun. That game definitely improved my visual responsivity and awareness, if not my actual acuity.
Neurobonkers sums it up quite well, "Until I've seen a replication with a randomised, double blind, placebo control group, I for one will be keeping my $5.99 firmly in my wallet."
A researcher charging money for an app based on an effect which he has not finished studying -- no blind study yet -- is a really... odd... thing to do in my opinion. Were it me, I wouldn't charge before the blind study is done.
It's called a "Gabor patch", and it's constructed by multiplying a 1D sine wave by a 2D gaussian window (it's the sine wave that's reminding you of the basis functions of the 2D DCT).
You'll see these all over the place if you read studies about vision. The (highly oversimplified) reason is that if you imagine the edge-detection processes of a mammalian brain as a set of filters, the impulse response of one of those filters would be a Gabor patch.
This is related to why the DCT is so effective for vision applications, although perhaps less significantly than you might imagine just by looking at the patterns.
This is cool! I being training my eyes using yoga exercises for about 2 months and I can really few the improvements by now. I'll test this app to see if it helps.
Somethings we get in front of a computer too much and your eyes begin to loose the ability to see things farther. It's all about training the muscles.
Off topic but I posted this yesterday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7261606). I didn't think you could repost articles (or at least it hasn't let me do it in the past.)
[+] [-] 13throwaway|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkl|12 years ago|reply
For people wanting to look at the code it's at https://github.com/Fordi/eyegame
Also, what's the license?
[+] [-] devindotcom|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghayes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyberias|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stangeek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ShardPhoenix|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eliasmacpherson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plaguuuuuu|12 years ago|reply
I was going to do it myself but ~24 hours later here we are :P
thank you internets!
[+] [-] staunch|12 years ago|reply
Bah! That's not a knife. This is a knife: twitch FPS gaming. Quake Live at 250 FPS, refreshed at 144hz, with < 5ms RTT latency. Reaction times can be compared in almost individual milliseconds. I'll put the reaction times of the best Quake Live player (rapha/cypher/evil, whoever) against the best baseball player any day.
Interestingly, my vision is extremely good. I've often surprised people with how far I can see clearly. So screw this app: learn how to play a twitch FPS well: http://www.quakelive.com/
[+] [-] cjensen|12 years ago|reply
Keep in mind that the ball is coming straight on, and the batter must discern trajectory (rising, falling) and spin (which affects how the ball curves) and velocity quickly enough that you still have time to move the bat.
For example, a fastball and a changeup both drop at the same rate and spin at the same rate. One is coming at 100mph, the other at 75. Since the ball is heading straight for you, you must perceive speed by measuring how quickly the ball is moving through your eye focus.
Worse, you are expected to bat in an intentional direction. Meaning that you have to hit the ball on an precise spot in the sphere with an intentional amount of force. It's not enough to just swing hard. I'd guess the bat has to be in the right location with a time accuracy of less than a millisecond.
The good batters make good money for a reason.
[+] [-] fatrachet|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] maxerickson|12 years ago|reply
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1y9m6w/a_neuroscien...
[+] [-] wherkewitz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcanyon|12 years ago|reply
I think the app must use web-based resources, and their site was slammed yesterday. I could do nothing but give it my name, and then it would go to a black screen and sit there -- no feedback, no activity, for minutes. I was left thinking I had wasted my money.
Today the app loads and runs successfully. The interface is bad. Really bad. Text-overlapping-other-text-and-graphics bad.
The controls are iffy. You're supposed to tap various images but sometimes the taps are off by an inch or more.
Nevertheless, it seemed to do pretty much what it is supposed to. It concluded my first session, congratulated me, and died. I checked and it saved my progress, so there's that.
I'm not totally put out since I got to do the exercises, and it seems plausible that it might help my mediocre vision. I hope the usability, design, and load issues are fixed soon.
[+] [-] eru|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|12 years ago|reply
Their purchase page has mysterious Apple and Windows icons, with a message saying "Is Now Available on the iPad".
But is there a Windows version, which the Windows icon would suggest? Or is it Windows Phone? OSX version? Web version? It says "Available on the App Store", but on my iPhone I can't find it.
And if it's only available for iPad, it doesn't even make sense that the site has a purchase page.
http://ultimeyesvision.com/purchase.php
[+] [-] mkl|12 years ago|reply
- video interview with researchers Seitz, Deveau and Ozer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKbbF66cyqI
- short published article on the baseball study: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(14)...
- lots more technical info about the app and the study (supplemental data to above article): http://download.cell.com/current-biology/mmcs/journals/0960-...
[+] [-] reubenmorais|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devindotcom|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NDizzle|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piyush_soni|12 years ago|reply
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1y9m6w/a_neuroscien...
[+] [-] donuon|12 years ago|reply
http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/the-app-that-trains-you-to-...
[+] [-] cjensen|12 years ago|reply
A researcher charging money for an app based on an effect which he has not finished studying -- no blind study yet -- is a really... odd... thing to do in my opinion. Were it me, I wouldn't charge before the blind study is done.
[+] [-] eru|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oakwhiz|12 years ago|reply
http://openi.nlm.nih.gov/imgs/512/312/2680596/2680596_pone.0...
It looks similar to this:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Dctjpeg....
[+] [-] mistercow|12 years ago|reply
You'll see these all over the place if you read studies about vision. The (highly oversimplified) reason is that if you imagine the edge-detection processes of a mammalian brain as a set of filters, the impulse response of one of those filters would be a Gabor patch.
This is related to why the DCT is so effective for vision applications, although perhaps less significantly than you might imagine just by looking at the patterns.
[+] [-] eru|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alisson|12 years ago|reply
Somethings we get in front of a computer too much and your eyes begin to loose the ability to see things farther. It's all about training the muscles.
[+] [-] mhb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MaysonL|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Houshalter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] privong|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irq|12 years ago|reply
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ultimeyes/id805408944?mt=8
[+] [-] TheSOB888|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyberias|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] caw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericxb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] triberian|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dorfsmay|12 years ago|reply