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Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

Apple: We're concerned about myopia from holding screens too close to your face.

Also Apple: Strap a pair of 4K displays an inch from your eyeballs!!!

The focal distance won't be an inch away of course. Every headset I've seen specs for puts the focal distance at 20ft. For normal human eyes, 20ft is optical infinity, so there's no difference optically between looking into a headset and looking at the horizon.

From my understanding, the Quest's focal distance is at 1.3m

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1371485209603022853

Valve Index reportedly around 6 feet

https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/by1j2z/focal_di...

Can confirm - as a nearsighted person, everything is blurry in my Index without glasses :)

Yeah 'EscapefromNY' is just making untrue claims.

Funny, the moment they showed the vision health feature, I immediately thought they'd come back to that later to tell us that computing using a headset is in fact better for the eyes (because of the lenses that shift the focal distance).

It's the focusing close that is bad, and with the lenses you are focusing further in the distance

As a glasses wearer I was wondering how this works. They mentioned extra lenses that I would have to install into the device. But why isn't it possible to do this all in software?

It takes optical phased array(we’re not there yet at all)) or light-field display(not there in computational power yet) to do this in software. Some googles has diopter correction/focus adjustment dials, but it’s not common for some reason, which I can only make assumptions, perhaps to do with motion sickness.

Because making the lenses movable and adjustable by software is significantly more complex than making them replaceable?

It's not possible because software cannot change the direction of light.

Most VR headsets have your eyes focused at infinity, so that’s usually not a problem.

Did they say anything about myopia from holding screens close? I thought they specifically said the feature was encouraging spending more time outside. I believe the current theory for increased myopia is from not getting enough sunlight into your eyes as a child. Nothing to do with focusing close.

From the iOS 17 press release:

> Additionally, increasing the distance the device is viewed from can help children lower their risk of myopia and gives adult users the opportunity to reduce digital eyestrain. Screen Distance in Screen Time uses the TrueDepth camera to encourage users to move their device farther away after holding it closer than 12 inches from their face for an extended period of time.

Link: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/ios-17-makes-iphone-m...

Directly after mentioning the sunlight monitoring/monitoring outside time feature they announced a feature that utilizes the Face ID cameras to warn you if you are holding a screen too close to your face.

Yeah, they also covered a new use of the lidar/camera on iPhones, to notify users that they're too close to the display. Called "Screen Distance"

https://www.apple.com/ios/health/

They also went from parents can "track your kids by buying them an iwatch" to "our fundamentals are privacy".

In many cultures, children are viewed as not being owed the same privacy that adults or even older children may be.

Theoretically the lenses could make this not a problem. We’ll have to see how it works in practice though.

It’s not theory. Every VR headset produced, since the 90’s, and every microscope, shortly after their invention, has had optics that make viewing comfortable, by having a distant focal distance, for the eyes to settle on. This is, quite literally, Physics 101 material!

Gesticulating with a hand all day like that probably can't be great either

This is completely wrong. Learn about lenses.

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