I’m not sure why they didn’t include a photo of someone actually wearing them, so here’s one for you: https://www.engadget.com/vixion01-glasses-reduce-eyestrain-b...

These look incredible, and a huge improvement over bifocals or similar. Having lenses that automatically adjust to focus at the distance you're looking would be incredible, for people who need one diopter for distance vision and another (or none at all) for close-up vision.

I hope it's possible to improve the field of view to match ordinary glasses. I also wonder if it'd be possible to change different parts of the lens to have different focal points, or change fast enough to allow for the equivalent of foveated rendering, such that you could look around at different things in your field of view and have them all appear in focus.

I am thrilled that this exists. I've been hoping for this since my near vision started going south twenty years ago. My current options are reading glasses (dollar store ones are as good as prescription) or hope that accommodating intraocular lenses are available when I eventually have to undergo cataract surgery. Bifocals are disorienting, multifocal contacts sort of work but I still need readers. It sucks to be on the fringe of so much medical technology - have to pay for the insurance but get squat in terms of treatment.

Hoping that it or some next-gen product comes to the US double-quick.

You can order here: https://pay.peraichi.com/fohjh4665zd/shop/m5yygz2eu4v?landin...

Only 79,200 yen surprisingly.

Initial Setup Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gSqFjZfrH8

People with low vision sometimes use glasses that are a little similar to this but are actual bifocals. The bottom component is ordinary glasses while the top component is telescopic. The telescopic component's focus can be changed, but it's manual. With special training, such glasses can allow¹ people who are otherwise too visually impaired to qualify for a driver's license to receive a limited driver's license with special training.

Glasses like those in TFA might be easier for drivers to adapt to, and their autofocus mechanisms might also be reusable for proper bioptic lenses, if that proves to be better for driving for one reason or another (i.e., some people actually need magnification, not just differentiated focus). I imagine if the manufacturer ever gets approval for such uses, those customers won't care too much what the glasses look like.

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1: https://www.webmd.com/eye-health/what-to-know-about-driving-...

>>> These Hi-Tech Bifocals Improved My Eyesight but Made Me Look Like a Huge Dork

Okay, but I wonder if there are any negative aspects. ;-)

Disclosure: Dork.

These would be great as workday wear (when not on Zoom.)

I started looking into computer glasses (short focal length) and quickly realized I’d need 2-3 pairs for all my work situations.

The daily charge could pay off if it reduces eye strain and perhaps even ends the workday sooner via quicker reading.

Would there be any pitfalls using these primarily to focus on screens of varying distances?

$555 sounds very cheap for possibly "the last pair of glasses you'll ever buy".

Progressives cost half as much but you'll have to buy a new pair on a regular basis.

I don't really care how they look (although anything made in Japan probably looks far better than anything else), but I wish the author, erm, focused on important things, like - what's the field of vision in these? Are they blocking peripheral vision, i.e. can someone drive with those?

Ive been reading about myopia, mostly some recent work out of japan. Our obsession with 20/20, at distance, seems to be exacerbating the issue. Im not sure that these will help. We perhaps need to admit that not everyone needs to shoot a gun, fly an airplane or even drive a car. The japanese work is showing that making things perfect at 20ft often makes the eye contort itself to see at the sub-foot range where most reading occurs. Acceptable vision at closer ranges would be a better standard than forcing perfect vision at distance, or at every distance via glasses that change focus.

Article would have been good with a picture on someone's face. Seems important given the title. I'm the kind of nerd who would wear high tech shit that makes me look like a dork if it was cool enough or the utility was big enough, but even I have my limits - and being able to see expressions and make eye contact is a pretty big deal with humans.

If they could adjust for LED headlights at night, this would be even more of a no-brainer. I'd still wear them if needed.

Surely focusing for you untrains your eyes how to focus and is bad for you in the long run.

This article is really lacking for such an interesting product. I am curious to get some insights from actual users from this to see how they feel about it. I guess one more thing to remember to charge can be annoying.

Do they also automatically correct for for muscle weakness? Some people's (my) prescription involves the use of prism lenses to correct for this and would otherwise get double-vision without them.

Boating. Switching between charts (or a device) and the horizon. Switching glasses to switch targets makes it tough to track that target on the horizon.

And hopefully they float.

I'd love to give it a try. I suspect it feels very odd to have it refocus just as my eyes are also refocusing, to the best of their very meager ability.

How easy would it be to add AR to this in future? It seems like small enough that you would not need too much extra mass from displays.

This gadgets seem pretty amazing, and I would gladly dump that amount into a product that works... think about it; my prescription glasses are already in that price range and they come with periodic visits to the optician.

BUT, I would be much more pleased to learn about treatments that stop and revert the aging in our optical systems. Glasses feel like such a low-tech crutch for our extremely advanced optical machinery...

Do these have as short a vertical field of view as it looks like they do?

Shame I won’t live long enough to see Deus Ex/Cyberpunk cyber eyes.

I think I'll just stick with multiple glasses.

Why do they look like they have 15deg fov?

Uhh.. or you could just wear multifocal contact lenses which work via concentric rings instead of dividing your vision into halves. Your brain very quickly learns to focus on objects up close more easily, and you don’t look like a dork.

https://coopervision.com/contact-lenses/biofinity-multifocal

I love these things. They’ve been on the market since 2011.

Paging LeVar Burton for endorsement. This looks like a Gen 1 VISOR.

Neat tech, I wonder if getting too used to it could actually lead to degredation of your sight.

I would not be wearing this outdoors but count me in for household activities!

Not clear, can you get prescription versions?

I’ve been having issues with my bi-focals lately. Looking far and cell phone at fine, but laptop sucks.

These can definitely help in that case, but yeah look weird.

> The ViXion01 is rated for 10 hours of battery life and some water resistance with an IPX3 rating. At 1.78 ounces, they are fairly lightweight, although I’d like to see how they feel after a few hours.

I appreciate the honesty in acknowledging that they didn't even spend a few hours with the glasses, but man am I sick of the low effort content on the internet today.

We're talking about a pair of $555 glasses and the author of this review straight up admits that they didn't use them for very long at all. This is about more than the weight—they're glasses! Do you get headaches after a few hours? We wouldn't know because she didn't wear them long enough to tell!

If you look at what she actually wrote, the only thing that wasn't drawn from the product description is that it wasn't hard to set up and she looked at some signage and was impressed but had a hard time with smaller text.

Is this what reviewing a product has to look like in 2024? Does anyone actually give more than 20 minutes to something before writing up a piece on it and moving on to the next thing?

This is what happens when you decide designers are no longer necessary.