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Comment by michaelbuckbee | Hacker News Reader

When I told my optometrist that I was a software developer he took me into this office and showed me his computer setup. Basically, he was a huge proponent of using massive TV screens in place of smaller computer monitors as it was so much easier on the eye.

I'm typing this on my machine connected to a 55" 4k TV that's about 33" away from my face. Given how inexpensive 4k TVs are compared to monitors and how well they work now it's an easy investment.

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I basically do the same, except I use a VR headset. I personally use a Valve Index headset with prescription lenses that are adapted to the VR headset, via a German company called VR Optician (no prescription required). I use Retinopsy VR Look usually for working. Retinopsy VR Look is not directly available in the Steam store (see: https://store.steampowered.com/app/750120/Retinopsy_VR__Look...) but you can get it in Viveport ( https://www.viveport.com/5445b338-0944-49a8-80ce-7c0f4ea7709...) and then import it into Steam. After that, you can delete Viveport.

I do this for another reason: severe convergence insufficiency. People in their 40s basically get convergence insufficiency and require prism lenses. But, mine is due to a rare neurological disease affecting my peripheral nervous system, which I have lived with since I was too young to read.

I've been doing this for YEARS and can confirm it's an amazing setup. I'm on my second 43" display. The first was a 4K TV and the new one is an Aorus 4K Gaming Monitor. It's high refresh rate and has a built in KVM switch. Not being a TV it turns on and off as you would expect a monitor to. I love it.

I plan to use this until OLED or equivalent new tech is burn-in proof.

I just peeked into those monitors and the built in KVM really sells it.

I'm still rocking a 32" Samsung 1080p HDTV from about 2010 at home.

I'd take the leap to 4K. It's time. :)

I have my work Macbook Pro connected over USB-C and my gaming PC over Displayport. I just turn on whichever system and the monitor turns on and my keyboard, mouse, wireless headset etc come to life. For a work-from-home setup it's really ideal.

Yeah, it's on my radar now. Maybe after my December bills have all cleared.

Have you noticed any difference with your 55" 4k TV setup compared to what you used before? I've often wondered about this, and considered the possibilities of high quality VR that could allow us to set up a virtual screen at any size and distance.

That works and I like to watch some stuff that way but it is highly capped by the resolution of your VR. It will always be a subset of the available pixels of your headsets max resolution.

I don't particularly felt that VR is easy on the eyes since while the illusion says otherwise, you have 2 very small monitors directly in front of your eyes, directly the opposite of what was suggested before. This is probably more relevant than the perception of distance.

There is a lens inbetween, it is usually optically equivalent of being 6ft back or so (sometimes infinity).

> I don't particularly felt that VR is easy on the eyes since while the illusion says otherwise, you have 2 very small monitors directly in front of your eyes

Think of it as having glasses. Your focal point isn't in front of your eyes where the glasses are, you're looking "through" them. It's the focal point that matters.

It's definitely easier on my eyes than trying to focus on a laptop screen and I feel pretty strongly that it's a big productivity boost to not have to flip around between a terminal, documentation, editor and output webpage constantly.

That being said standard window management really falls down with the larger screen real estate and I use a 3rd party window manager mapped to keyboard shortcuts to split the screen up into smaller chunks.

> 55" 4k TV that's about 33" away from my face

This is so obvious now that I think about it. Name the number animals in our evolutionary lineage whose survival depended on staring at a tiny object closer than an arms length away. Besides us, I can't think of a single one. Even most humans were able to get by with mostly distance vision until very recently.

I'm glad that large screens are becoming so much more economical, because this just makes a whole lot of sense.

I was under the assumption that bigger the monitor more the light and more strain on the eye. Am I thinking wrong ?

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