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Videogames Sharpen Player Vision
Via GameSpot, the news on the University of Rochester site is that playing videogames can actually improve your vision. Games, especially action shooters, actually change the way your brain looks at the world. According to the findings of researchers Daphne Bavelier and Shawn Green, visual processing is enhanced through consistent play of complex graphical titles. Simple orientation tests were much easier for a group that played UT, compared to a group that only played Tetris.
When I'll eventually need glasses, I'll instead consider turning up the anisotropic filtering in the real world.
My wife and I (yes, I know, this is /. and mentioning wives/girlfriends is controversial) have been playing Unreal Tournament on a regular basis for a while now. I wonder if that's got anything at all to do with my left eye's improvement in my last exam. I had to have my corrective lens prescription weakened a bit.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
3:00AM, red eyes, they hurt. ;)
I don't see how videogames sharpen player vision.
I can't see anything...
-- Rastignac was here.
These murder simulators even go so far as enhancing the person who trains under them to become a better murderer. We must stop them now because their eyesight is almost good enough to hit us from 1000 yards with no scope. Hurry, lobby congress!
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
but the eyestrain and migraines are a bitch. pWn3d!
From they way they describe the test, it sounds less like it improved vision and more like it improved visual processing, which is nothing new.
Demented But Determined.
http://seanbaby.com/nes/dearnintendo03.htm
actually change the way your brain looks at the world.
I was sure I had heard something like this somewhere already, then it hit me like a baseball bat in the hands a schoolyard bully it was Jack Thompson. Who would of thought that he was actually ahead of the game.
I noticed a marked improvement in my hand-eye coordination after I first started playing Nintendo games regularly as a kid (though considering how uncoordinated I was, really the only way was up :)
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
the news on the University of Rochester site is that playing videogames can actually improve your vision.
Are they making glasses with WallHack(tm) now? I know that helped my game plenty.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
We get better at things we do more often.
All the better to frag you with, sweetheart.
I've been playing video games for over 20 years and my eyesight sucks. My entire immediate family wears glasses so I don't know what combination of genetics and staring at CRTs is responsible for this.
However, my perception is definitely better than many other people I know. Despite my glasses I was even given the nickname "The Eye" because of my knack for pointing out small details of importance or amusement. I don't know but have a good feeling that video games are largely responsible for this - especially graphical adventure games like old Sierra and Lucasarts titles where you had to study a scene extensively to determine the next course of action.
Despite being stuck in a shit town called Rochester, NY, U of R does some awesome research. The local paper had an article a month or so back about a video game study they did and how they evoke the same emotional reactions that other things in life do, or something. (Duh, any gamer coulda told you that.) Anyways, it seems we gamers have a friend in the U of R. Two positive research studies for video games, whoo hoo!
This may be true, but Tetris has its own benefits. The study is unfairly biased against Tetris.
Tetris makes vision worse!
Or disable the depth blur. I still remember going back to COH after the I6 or I7 patch hit, can't really remember which. So they've added all these nice detailed textures everywhere, bumpmapping and... wtf... anything farther than 100 ft or so looks like smeared crap. Like a bubblejet printed picture left out in the rain. Then I turn off the new depth blur option and everything's sharp again.
So, yeah, if you find yourself having a bad case of myopia IRL, look for that setting in the options.
Kidding aside, that's one thing that... makes me seriously wonder, to say the least. More than a decade of hardware acceleration, billions of R&D dollars spent on making cards powerful enough for 16x anisotropy and 6x FSAA in 1600x1200, more texture memory and bandwidth than you can shake a DMA at, and... we use it to make it all look blurry and shitty like it's 1991 again. Who comes up with this kind of ideas anyway?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
FPSs may have given me better vision, but thank to Tetris I'll never look at tile floors or window panes the same way again.
After a few rounds of tetris, I can see blocks even when I close my eyes.
That's got to mean I've got even better vision to see things that aren't even normally visible.
(I'm not convinced they're not there, you see)
More Twoson than Cupertino
In some way you "train" your brain to process more efficiently fast images with much information content...
From my own experience with shooters, I remember I sometimes suffered motion sickness when I started playing quake. I also notice it is harder to follow the images when I have not played from a long time.
Anyway, I think this is more related to your brain, not your eyes. You may just learn to take into account only the "important" visual information and discard the rest.
They should have had another group reading /. for 8 hours to see the affects.
If it does the opposite of 1st person shooters, and makes vision worse, we all may have no choice but to go home and game for a few hours to repair any damage done to our eyes throughout the day.
This study needs more funding!
PtPete
I've got to wonder if the people who identified the T shapes actually did it by seeing the shape itself or identifying them by color. All licensed Tetris games now apparently follow a guideline, part of which dictates the colors of the Tetrominos. I would guess that quickly identifying the outline of a shape suggests a greater visual acuity than identifying a shape by its color.
While I agree that your suggestion is more likely, perhaps it's backwards.
Maybe people with good vision or visual processing are more likely to play games like UT, and people with poorer vision or processing are more likely to play Tetris.
Vision is not enhanced, perception is. You are training your brain to quickly evaluate information that is not directly in line of sight. In a RTS, you are looking intently at what you are shooting at, with literally part of an eye out for your next target and/or threat.
Your peripheral vision is mainly a warning system. Through practice you train your brain to look for the "not right" peripheral vision information. Processing speed of the information is also increased.
I wish I had more authority to cite beside this is what I was taught during my time in the service.
I am almost 30 now, and my eyesight hasn't wanned but slightly in the last few years. I used to be able to see individual pine needles on a top tree branch 400 yds away. I was allways pointing out things I thought were "amazing" and it iritated people. Now I see closer to what my friends saw when I was 20 or so, and my 30 yo freinds think I am some sort of cyborg w/ super vision.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Sigh...
Doing things in a scientific-esque manner and pretending your doing science is far worse than being just being unscientific and acknowledging it. This study has a lot of scientifikiness to it. Of course, it's unfortunately not unusual in that respect, but that doesn't make it OK.
Oh, and i only skimmedTFA. So if i missed the part where they admitted their study has zero scientific value, then i apologize.
jz (Je-Tze)
...Just let me know once I can pick up things just by walking over them. I tried that with the hamster yesterday and it didn't work at all!
If it does the opposite of 1st person shooters, and makes vision worse, we all may have no choice but to go home and game for a few hours to repair any damage done to our eyes throughout the day.
/. at home.
/. at work.
We all know no one would read
I admit it, I only read
Maybe it matters WHICH game you are playing. Certainly after about an hour of Dr. Mario, my eyes want to call it a day!
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
when my wife read this she noted i must now have eyes like a hawk.. then she asked me if her ass looked fat, thanks a lot Slashdot!
I wish they'd repeat the experiment with foosball.
Wait a minute. Didn't I say that on the other side of the record? I'd better check