Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Visual experiences of 3d: basketball

This is really cool, and my visual system. loved it. Tracing curves in space, focus with highlighting, fine motion detection.

The game is entirely three-dimensional. The fact that the players are not flying is not relevant; the game is three-dimensional. Binocular vision is not there merely for throwing the ball and getting it in the basket. The whole thing is about the ball moving in space. The players are not only actively using their binocular vision, but they are aware of the other players' binocular vision. I saw how one guy tricked the other two guys chasing him and was able to change direction and escape. He used their eye body connection. He did something that triggered their focus and motion detection mechanisms, and their bodies followed.

The mode in which the players are functioning is very similar to the survival mode I was describing above. In this case "survival" does not mean "overfocusing", it means "presence". When one player throws the ball to the other one, and they do it well, there is no need to establish the connection before throwing a ball: they were already connected.

I don't know what happens with an experienced player who just lost one eye; however, what about someone who never had binocular vision? I know that everything is possible, but it is highly unlikely that this person will become a decent basketball player. Basketball should be very difficult even with highly developed compensation, since every situation is slightly different. Furthermore, I don't see enough possibility for compensations.

Think about it. Empty space where the ball is flying doesn't have many landmarks to use for compensation. Say, you are a player, and you see player A throwing the ball to player B. You have to anticipate how long the ball will be flying, and you have to anticipate the actions of player B, and for that you have to anticipate the trajectory. Of course, you can watch the body language of the player A, but judging by the compensations that I had developed for all kinds of things, you may spend years learning to detect the trajectory of a ball from the body language of whoever is throwing it, and only get that far. Of course, if you had played basketball for many years with binocular vision, you mind may have memorized the connections between the body language of the player throwing a ball plus the flat trajectory as seen by one eye, and the true three-dimensional trajectory. Then, after, say, losing one eye, it is conceivable that the player may still play fairly well, even though good basketball playing is real-time, and all compensations are slow. However, a person who has never had a binocular experience probably cannot learn to see or predict the path of the ball as it flies between two other people.

Even the trajectory of the ball flying to you may be difficult to detect, and your opponents that are near you at the moment will see it clearly. The only thing you can really learn to compensate is choosing the trajectory of the ball you are throwing. Even then, this relies on detecting the distance to the person or to the basket, and this distance detection should be fairly precise.So I have to suspect that even an experienced player who lost the vision in one eye may have difficulties successfully shooting the ball through the hoop.

In fact, it seems that there is some information about it on the Internet. Try searching e.g. "basketball eye patch" or "basketball one eye".

On a more optimistic note, if you have some binocular vision problem, either a complete lack of it or just some convergence insufficiency, go, watch or play some basketball, and see if it helps.


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