Ubisoft Has New Video Game Designed To Treat Lazy Eye

wired_parrot writes Ubisoft, in partnership with McGill university, has developed a game designed to treat lazy eye. The game works as a treatment by training both eyes using different levels of contrast of red and blue that the patient sees through stereoscopic glasses. It is hopeful that the new treatment will bring a more effective way of addressing a condition that affects 1-5% of the population.

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[Joe_Dragon]

no it will cost $500-$1000 and maybe be DRM locked to a $1000 display.

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[almitydave]

Yes. It will also require installation of Starforce, Uplay malware and require a constant internet connection. Oh and it won't be at all usable until the fifth post-release patch. Ubisoft will also whine that every user is a dirty pirate haxor who is stealing money from them.

I used to have lazy eye, but after having to deal with Ubisoft DRM it now twitches uncontrollably.

Not PC

[codeButcher]

lazy eye

It's called kinetically challenged ocular organ, you insensitive clod.

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[codeButcher]

lazy eye

It's called kinetically challenged ocular organ, you insensitive clod.

And just to preempt the humor and irony challenged, yes I know the medical term is Amblyopia. There's even a link in the summary to the Wikipedia article.

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[Marginal Coward]

the humor and irony challenged

They're called nerds, you insensitive clod. There's even a whole website devoted to their "news", where they can exchange comments that they mutually deem to be "insightful", "informative", etc.

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[spune]

~Actually~, lazy eye is not a physical malady, but is a condition where the brain suppresses visual input from one eye, for whatever reason. Misaligned, crossed, or drifting eyes are reasons why some people develop lazy eye, but there are other causes that have nothing to do with "kinetically challenged" eyes. The misimpression that amblyopia is necessarily a physical problem is stoked by it's colloquial name "lazy eye," but humorless nerds should know better.

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[fleeped]

"challenged? "So rude. "Kinetically special" please from now on.

And of course

[DrXym]

It will have a boss battle.

I developed this crap when I hit 35

[AbRASiON]

Bloody annoying.
As my eye quality slowly degraded, I found at night, when I was straining to read something my left eye would just basically say "look, I'm wasting everyones time here, do you mind if I shut down?" and it would just pull a C3PO and just whirrrr and look down to the lower left.

Quite annoying considering I wasn't a "lazy eye" guy previously.
Seems to particularly kick in when I'm tired too.

I wonder if there's a way to get glasses which are slightly worse in one eye to make the other one pick it

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[Anonymous Coward]

Eye patches or using other methods to "punish the good eye", sometimes using eye drops as well. I assume you've tried eye glasses?

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[Ravaldy]

Eye glasses don't help the lazy eye, instead it helps both eyes and prevents premature fatigue. Using an eye patch over the good eye helps make the lazy eye's muscles more enduring but this only helps if you continue doing it.

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[wonkey_monkey]

My eyes do that too, especially when I'm tired. You can catch them in the act by closing your eyes for a few seconds and watching the images converge when you open them again.

When I'm really tired, I tilt my head the other way so gravity gives it a bit of help, or give it a push with my finger (against the eyelid, not the eyeball)

One of the tests when I got my last pair of glasses was for this kind of divergence, but these glasses don't seem to correct for it. My first pair may have done, as things appeared

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[f3rret]

when i used to go raving / clubbing, tons of people had really dodgy eyes the next morning..

That's because of all the drugs, mate, lazy eye ain't got nothing to do with it.

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[HornWumpus]

You did too much man.

Don't dart your eyes between theirs, it makes you look shifty eyed. Do you do the same thing when you're fucking?

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[aliquis]

Do having spherical or aspherical glasses affect the magnification at the same strength? If so maybe that.

I lose a lot of "wide angle" with my glasses and stuff are bigger than without (positive strength.)

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[Per Wigren]

Same thing for me when I hit around 30, but I wasn't diagnosed until I was 36. In Swedish I have what is called "hidden squint" because you are not actually squinting, but you eyes' resting position is non-parallel. It's easy to diagnose by looking at something, covering one of your eyes for a few seconds, then when you remove your hand you see two pictures that quickly move together to form a single picture again. This means that your eye muscles must constantly use some force to not see double. This happe

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[drinkypoo]

My right eye does that when I'm tired, but my eyelid is actually notably different on that side, I've too much of it. My father had both of his eyelids trimmed back by the VA to try to treat his headaches, apparently only one side of my head has this congenital defect. Probably have it trimmed up next time I go out of the country.

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[blindbat]

I found it is worse with two monitors side by side or one that is off to an angle. Not looking straight on at a monitor seems to cause me a lot of fatigue in one of my eyes. Going back to one monitor has stopped a lot of eyestrain for me.

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[AbRASiON]

Interestingly, I started becoming a heavy dual monitor user a year or two before this kicked in for me...? :/

Good idea but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It''ll probably require UPlay

The Brock string

[Anonymous Coward]

The book that explains it all and offers the solution to the "lazy eye" problem: http://www.fixingmygaze.com/

The exercise you should be doing daily, to get rid of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brock_string (also check out videos on Youtube)

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[coofercat]

I had non-binocular vision when I was a kid. the guy in the white coat just took a length of cardboard, drew a line down the middle of it and drew some blobs on the line which he marked from 1..10. I got a bunch of other exercises too (I seem to remember two stick men, one with arms but no legs and one with legs but no arms and having to make them into one complete stick man). I can't remember those very well, but that bit of cardboard fixed it for me.

As an aside, if lazy eye affects such a small proportion

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[quetwo]

I remember going through these exercises on a daily basis for nearly 5 years when I was a kid. They weren't pleasant to do, and required a lot of time and concentration. My doctor wanted me to do them 3 times a day, which I did for a while, but there was no difference. His response was that it helped some people, and just to keep on it for the rest of my life. I gave up shortly after.

I can still see, although only through one eye at a time, and for me this is purely a cosmetic issue.

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[spune]

Misalignment or poor coordination of the eyes (strabismus) is just one cause of lazy eye, so this therapy can help a subset of people with lazy eye. It's worth noting that drifting or crossed eyes can cause lazy eye, but lazy eye itself is an error in the way your brain processes visual information regardless of whether the cause is simply structural.

Side Effects

[mentil]

Unfortunately, reported side effects include objects appearing to pop into your vision, seeing people as having no faces, feeling like one is falling through the world, the world around you appearing to slow down, strange reactions to hay, and feeling disconnected from others.

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[sociocapitalist]

Unfortunately, reported side effects include objects appearing to pop into your vision, seeing people as having no faces, feeling like one is falling through the world, the world around you appearing to slow down, strange reactions to hay, and feeling disconnected from others.

Should appeal to the LSD crowd just fine then

Proposed name

[cloud.pt]

Have some suggestions for the game name: VideoHead, or Lazy Eye Falling into Place, or Paranoid Eyedroid

Playing years of Ubisoft games...

[buckfeta2014]

... gives people lazy eye, and they trust us to let them fix it? I'll take my chances, thanks.

ridiculous statistic

[slashmydots]

1-5% you say? So in my graduating class, there were 33 kids with a lazy eye? Actually there were zero.

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[Renegade88]

I think it's more ridiculous to think you personally knew every one of the 660 - 3,300 people in your class. There were ~200 in my senior class and I don't think I could claim I knew for sure that none of the 200 had even a single lazy eye. I would be surprised if that's the case.

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[spune]

How do you know? Are you sure you aren't confusing lazy eye (amblyopia) with some of the physical conditions that can cause lazy eye, such as crossed eyes or a drifting eye? Without looking through your classmates' medical records or personally conducting eye exams on all of them, you really have no way to know how many of them have brains that suppress vision from one eye.

It seems like you don't know what lazy eye is

[Ecuador]

You can't tell a person who has a lazy eye from one who does not just by looking at them. You can't even tell by their prescription! For example, I have hyperopia in both eyes, and I correct it with eyeglasses - 3.5 in one eye, 5.5 on the other. The eye that had more hyperopia was used less by my brain, since it was less useful before I started wearing glasses. The doctor when I was young should have patched the good eye for a while, but he was a lousy doctor. So now, with the glasses that correct hyperopia

Wait

[Dunbal]

Does it require an always on internet connection?

Repeating all our worst ideas

[Terry95]

When I was a kid the doctors were actually doing the same thing. They gave me a book to read with alternate red and blue words and red/blue glasses to wear. The idea was to strengthen your lazy eye. What it does do is trains you in the weird ability to consciously control which eye you are looking out of. This has the unfortunate side effect of severely impairing your 3d vision / depth perception.

Whenever I mention those glasses to doctors today they grumble sub-vocally and get this disgusted look on t

Much cheaper and don't have to wait if...

[sls1j]

one could take an open source game and modify the graphics so some are light cyan and some are light red. Then you wouldn't be dependent on Ubisoft or this other firm, nor wait for the FDA trails to give it try. Of course do it quietly or you'll have a patent troll on you.

Double vision

[operagost]

My father suffers from double vision following brain surgery. I wonder if this or something similar would help with that. So far, his doctors haven't been able to help him much.

lazy eye

[MrKaos]

I was treated for this when I was a child not using eye patches but eye exercises that were optical illusions. I'm in my 40's now and I'm only just now is the lazy eye returning.

I'll be happy if I can use this software to help.