The varifocals have arrived

Jul 11, 2018 72 Replies

I find that my unaided eyesight is fine for reading dashboard instruments or a computer screen. With distance glasses on, the dashboard is *slightly* less clear, but so little as to be negligible. With my reading glasses on, the dashboard is a lot more blurred (and the world outside is hopeless).

My accommodation is a lot worse than it used to be: my distance eyesight has always been good and still isn't bad, but I could also read without glasses until about 5 years ago, though I may have been struggling more and more before I realised. Now I can't read a book without glasses.

Dashboards are different from reading: text is larger in relation to apparent size at the viewing distance, compared with normal book text; most of the time you need to see the position of a needle relative to a marker and some numbers. As long as the vision is good enough to determine what the icon is on the light that's just come on, that's good enough. (Mind you, I have "icon blindness" in that I can see the icon fine but have great difficulty working out what is depicted so I can relate that to what it means - which is psychological rather than optical. It would help if all cars used identical icons for the same situation - not just the same picture but the same drawing of it - in the way that all cross-roads signs are identical copies of each other, not just a cross of variable design.) Road signs and play/pause/rewind icons are fine. It's all the esoteric ones for "windscreen washer low", and "headlights" versus "foglights" that have so many different forms.

I'm 6'3" maybe shrinking now? Nose to dashboard 85cm for me, and 75cm for the PC screen at home (I had measured as I expected the optician would ask regarding 'intermediate' distances)

I really have to think to differentiate between the buttons for front & rear fogs. Apparently I have to "know" that the bonnet is pointing left. :-)

Chris

Mine isn't. What do you do when you need to reset the trip meter and do stuff like that ?

so not really a problem for me

I'm 5'6"

Not that I have that problem, but my trip meter reset is on the steering wheel!

You can have your rear fog lights on without the fronts one been turned on?

I can on my S-Max. And again, the left hand control is the front ones...

Yeah, two independent buttons on my present and previous car (thoughtfully positioned so they're hidden behind the steering wheel on RHD models)

No, Audi. When I first got into the new one I thought "great, they've realised and moved them so you can see them now" but by the time I'd adjusted the seat and steering wheel position, they were perfectly hidden again :-(

Exactly the same on my S-Max. The only improvement on the new one is that the warning lights are now in the instrument cluster, not down by the invisible switches! Still two buttons and I can never remember which one is which without craning round and looking.

I agree. Also, I've noticed that it is harder to read devices that emit, rather than reflect, light such as Computer and SatNav screens at extremes of the vision range.

Completely unconnected with this, when I got my first pair of VariFocals, apart from the edge defocussing as previously mentioned, I had no trouble with them but got a pleasant surprise when I walked int a local pub which had a strange bar design so that it was much deeper where the beer engines were than the parts where the fonts for the fizzy keg muck were.

I walked up to the bar and suddenly found I could read the abv figures off the pump handles from a standing position without leaning half way across the bar as previously!

In message , Terry Casey writes

Me too.

Reflective car number plates illuminated by my headlights appear double and slightly shifted to the right. I think my prescription includes some astigmatism correction but I have not yet given in to wearing glasses for driving.

I can easily read 5mm high print at dashboard distance but not when it is self illuminating.

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