> "<i>When a major league baseball pitcher throws a 95-mph fastball, only about 400 milliseconds—the duration of a blink—pass before the ball rockets over the plate. And a batter gets less than half that time to decide whether to swing, and where. Baseball"</i><p>Bah! That's not a knife. This is a knife: twitch FPS gaming. Quake Live at 250 FPS, refreshed at 144hz, with < 5ms RTT latency. Reaction times can be compared in almost individual milliseconds. I'll put the reaction times of the best Quake Live player (rapha/cypher/evil, whoever) against the best baseball player <i>any day</i>.<p>Interestingly, my vision is extremely good. I've often surprised people with how far I can see clearly. So screw this app: learn how to play a twitch FPS well: <a href="http://www.quakelive.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.quakelive.com/</a>
The article author and also the researcher showed up on reddit:<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1y9m6w/a_neuroscientist_has_just_developed_an_app_that/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1y9m6w/a_neuroscien...</a>
For anyone wondering about the (bad) ratings in the iOS App Store: I bought this yesterday for an iPad mini.<p>I think the app must use web-based resources, and their site was slammed yesterday. I could do nothing but give it my name, and then it would go to a black screen and sit there -- no feedback, no activity, for minutes. I was left thinking I had wasted my money.<p>Today the app loads and runs successfully. The interface is bad. Really bad. Text-overlapping-other-text-and-graphics bad.<p>The controls are iffy. You're supposed to tap various images but sometimes the taps are off by an inch or more.<p>Nevertheless, it seemed to do pretty much what it is supposed to. It concluded my first session, congratulated me, and died. I checked and it saved my progress, so there's that.<p>I'm not totally put out since I got to do the exercises, and it seems plausible that it might help my mediocre vision. I hope the usability, design, and load issues are fixed soon.
Ugh, their website doesn't even explain what platforms it works on. Their home page, about page, and FAQ don't mention it at all.<p>Their purchase page has mysterious Apple and Windows icons, with a message saying "Is Now Available on the iPad".<p>But is there a Windows version, which the Windows icon would suggest? Or is it Windows Phone? OSX version? Web version? It says "Available on the App Store", but on my iPhone I can't find it.<p>And if it's <i>only</i> available for iPad, it doesn't even make sense that the site has a purchase page.<p><a href="http://ultimeyesvision.com/purchase.php" rel="nofollow">http://ultimeyesvision.com/purchase.php</a>
This kind of reminds of playing <i>Tribes</i> in the early days. I was a sniper and would hang out in the mountains, monitoring miles of terrain and waiting for the slightest pixel of movement so I could zoom in to the max and nail it with the laser gun. That game definitely improved my visual responsivity and awareness, if not my actual acuity.
A user on reddit quickly came up with a free Web, Android, Windows exe, and a mac app for this. Hackers of this world, I tell you. :)<p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1y9m6w/a_neuroscientist_has_just_developed_an_app_that/cfiwf7p" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1y9m6w/a_neuroscien...</a>
Neurobonkers sums it up quite well, "Until I've seen a replication with a randomised, double blind, placebo control group, I for one will be keeping my $5.99 firmly in my wallet."<p><a href="http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/the-app-that-trains-you-to-see-farther-or-does-it" rel="nofollow">http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/the-app-that-trains-you-to-...</a>
It's an interesting effect, if it exists.<p>A researcher charging money for an app based on an effect which he has not finished studying -- no blind study yet -- is a really... odd... thing to do in my opinion. Were it me, I wouldn't charge before the blind study is done.
The image that they show reminds me of the way that the 2D discrete cosine transform works.<p><a href="http://openi.nlm.nih.gov/imgs/512/312/2680596/2680596_pone.0005594.g002.png" rel="nofollow">http://openi.nlm.nih.gov/imgs/512/312/2680596/2680596_pone.0...</a><p>It looks similar to this:<p><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Dctjpeg.png" rel="nofollow">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Dctjpeg....</a>
This is cool! I being training my eyes using yoga exercises for about 2 months and I can really few the improvements by now. I'll test this app to see if it helps.<p>Somethings we get in front of a computer too much and your eyes begin to loose the ability to see things farther. It's all about training the muscles.
Off topic but I posted this yesterday (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7261606" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7261606</a>). I didn't think you could repost articles (or at least it hasn't let me do it in the past.)
Here's a link to the app on the iOS App Store. Seems to be iPad-only at the moment.<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ultimeyes/id805408944?mt=8" rel="nofollow">https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ultimeyes/id805408944?mt=8</a>