Landing with one eye

[ltdiver 3]

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I've been blind in on eye since birth

Sorry to hear that John. Sucks.

Guess you never got to enjoy the adventures of transition from binocular to monocular, huh. It's an interesting journey.

My hero (and someone who's written about her loss and transition) is the actress Sandy Duncan. She lost her eyesite in one eye to a optic nerve tumor. Damn near killed her. A friend of the family gave an written interview of hers to me during my recovery. Helped alot. Not only with the visual changes, but the emotional struggle as well. The loss hit me about 6 months after...no wonder I buried myself in my school work and grades that year. Hmmmm.....

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[Tonto 1]

I had a buddy who jumped and was blind in one eye. Lost it as an adult being drunk and walking through the bush back to his hut at the DZ. This was nearly 20 years back, and he jumped an XL Cloud I think. As canopies got smaller and faster - he went the way of Paraflite, and after a few years of scraping himself along the ground, stopped jumping. Mind you, so did just about everyone else from that generation...
Does Binocular vision really only work up to 10 yards?
I thought it would be further than that. Every land/air borne predator on the planet has binocular vision. Prey tend to go for wider angle vision...
I like having 2 eyes. Anyone know any 1 eyed people loading to 1.7 and beyond?

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[crazy 0]

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Does Binocular vision really only work up to 10 yards?

On the average, binocular disparity (the difference of parallax between the two eyes) can detect parallactic angles of 3 arc second. Roughly this is the parallactic angle of an object at 200 feet. It doesn't mean that it works up to 200 feet, but that it has a contribution up to 200 feet. Roughly, the contribution is very significant up to 50 feet for people with two good eyes.

As a slight addition to Bill's comprehensive information, the combined effect of physiological cues (mainly binocular disparity and visual motion parallax) and psychological cues (retinal image size, linear perspective, haziness, overlapping, shades and texture gradients) enhances depth perception greatly. This means that if you are in a perfectly unknown environment, without binocular disparity you'll have a very hard time. In a familiar environment, you'll be fine with one eye only.
Speed is also an important element. In a static environment, the brain will easily use the full detail of all the available cues to make up a realistic perception of depth. In a fast moving environment, you don't have enough time to integrate all the small details and binocular disparity would make a significant difference.
Actually, many people hardly use binocular disparity; they just use a bit more all the other cues. Visual motion parallax can be trained to some extent. The psychological cues are learned, hence they can also be trained.
Some people have a perception of depth with one eye almost as good as the average binocular vision. However, for most people, landing after losing a contact lens can be tricky, particularly at high wing loading and under unusual circumstances (late sunset for instance). Personally i wear contact lenses, and i won't take the risk to jump with loose goggles.

--
Come
Skydive Asia

[riddler 0]

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About the only other test that I can think of would be to cover the other eye and see how well you do.

That's it Quade, we want to find out just how good Billvon really is by getting him to jump with BOTH eyes covered j/k.

In all seriousness, I'm one of those shameful people that doesn't look at the horizon to land (bad Riddler, bad!) I tried it for the first 50 jumps or so, and all I got was a hole on the backside of my jumpsuit. Brian Germaine advised me to look for the point on the ground that doesn't move - I do that and it works for me, but I do keep my eyes on it all the way until I start my flair. This isn't the "advised" way to land, but I would hazard to say it's kept me out of the emergency room so far.

Because I land like I do, depth perception isn't as important. I don't need both eyes to find the spot that doesn't move. I'm definitely not saying this is a better way to land (it's not), or that anyone else should do it (they shouldn't). It's just what I do, and in my case, I think I could probably land with one eye. Of course, I haven't tried it, but I'm still working on flaring with one arm

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

[sunshine 2]

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I've been blind in on eye since birth and the only thing I have a problem with are the optical illusions that require you're brain to merge 2 pictures into one.

I can't see those things, or 3D movies either. Like anything else in life, you learn to adapt with what you have. I can never get a true comparison of how i would funtion with 2 working eyes, cause my left eye has been this way since birth. I don't know what it's like to have peripheral vision in my left eye, i'm used to the blind spot since i've never known any different. I used to worry about people in freefall coming at me from my left, but it doesn't seem to be a problem.

I've always had landing issues. I have a little over 500 jumps now and still only land on my feet about 80% of the time. I'm a master of the butt slide!!

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meow

I get a Mike hug! I get a Mike hug!

[councilman24 36]

I have a friend blind in one eye. He makes his living as a carpenter doing very good finish work. He also is one of the better canopy pilots around there. He got a pilots license with special fight testing. I'm not sure you get to blame your butt slides on your eyesight, but it makes a good excuse. I have a busted up leg. For about two years after the repair I couldn't take a running step, so if I had speed left I flared for my butt and slid like sliding into second. After my leg started working better it took me two or three years to relearn how to flare for my feet.

One Halloween party I covered one eye and blended the socket in with morticians wax. Looked like I didn't have an eye socket. My eye was open behind the patch and that was weird. In order to grab a glass of beer I had to line up with it and go straight out till my hand hit it. If I tried to grab it bringing my hand from the side I'd miss. Now this is a serious handcap when it effects BEER!

I'm old for my age.
Terry Urban
D-8631
FAA DPRE

[reprobate 0]

Both in theory and in practice, people with one working eye can judge depth.

You can judge depth but it is different. I had my right eye knocked out by a golf ball. I can see daylight but there is a black spot right in the middle and it doesn't focus.

Before this I was a fair track & field hand, afterward

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I had (& have) a hard time judgeing the jump. Ditto the 10 meter board. I did the usuall messing around on bicycles and took up mountain bike & cyclocross racing after loseing the eye. About half the time I bust my ass on a jump.

Using relative sizes, positions, crossing speeds etc works fine if, as Lori pointed out, one has time to digest it.

I can't see my STP coach on my right side and it does make a difference in how I react. As far as landing is concerned, my only experiance is monocular but I have a feeling that if I had learned before loseing the eye it would not have been too hard to adjust.

Carl

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