If 3-D looks a bit ‘flat’ to you or if you’re having trouble seeing 3-D, you might have problems with your 'binocular' or stereo vision.
While it’s easy to see there’s an increasing number of movies, television shows (and televisions) that are now in 3-D, actually seeing those 3-D effects is not so easy for some people.
The Australasian College of Behavioural Optometrists (ACBO) is taking the opportunity among the heightened awareness of all things 3-D, to alert people to possible vision problems that may have been uncovered by a simple visit to the cinema to see the latest 3-D release.
Many people have a degree of stereoblindness, which is the inability to see depth properly. For some people they might feel some discomfort watching a 3-D film, while other people can’t see the 3-D effect at all.
3-D stands for 3-Dimensional, or what gives things depth. People who don’t have 3-D vision will often say that things look flat.
Some have likened it to listening to music, in mono rather than stereo, or from one speaker rather than two.
When it comes to our eyes, each one gives us a different picture and when the images from both eyes merge together, successfully, we see the one 3-D image. The eyes have to work together, simultaneously and as a coordinated team.
Watching 3-D programs and films can reveal issues like lazy eye (amblyopia), turned eye, crossed eyes or wandering eye (strabismus), convergence insufficiency, poor focusing skills and other visual problems you might not have known existed. So eye strain, double vision, blurred vision, headache and nausea can result if your binocular vision system isn’t working at its best.
Importantly, vision therapy can help improve binocular vision in most cases. Thanks to the brain’s ability to change at any age, your vision can also be changed at any age.
So if 3-D is looking flat, take the opportunity to find out if there’s an underlying vision problem that can be rectified with vision therapy. A standard sight exam will often miss vision problems that affect comfortable 3-D vision. A behavioural optometrist will conduct a thorough and detailed eye and vision examination.
There are methods to help teach people to see in 3-D such as lenses, particular activities and tasks so people can eventually learn how to point both eyes so they focus on the same space. That’s why it’s often called ‘vision training’.
