Recently, my eyes have been getting tired (recently referring to my vacation). It generally happens when I’m in the middle of playing Kameo. So I decided to make my eye checkup appointment this week, something I’ve been planning to do for months now, but never really got around to it.
I called on Monday and they told me they had an opening on Tuesday morning at 9:30am. Usually I’d decline and schedule in the afternoon, but this being Thanksgiving week, I decided to just suck it up and wake up really early Tuesday morning. I didn’t go to sleep till 5am the night before, so when my alarm clock went off at 8:30am, I didn’t want to get out of bed, but eventually did. I have been recommended to Overlake Eye Designs by some friends at work and Dr. Tony Wong was really neat. We were chatting and talking about work and school and it turned out be from Berkeley too! We then talked about our game against USC this past weekend (horrible lost) and if I ever went to get my eyes checked at the optometry center in Berkeley.
So he did the normal stuff (actually her receptionist did a bunch) including puffing air into my eye, taking pictures of my cornea, checking my peripheral vision, see what I could read, checking out how my eye responds to light, etc, etc. So then I brought up the fact that my eyes were recently getting really tired quickly. I had mention I was playing games for a few hours and he said that he noticed the bottom of my eyes were rather dry and believes that it may be due to extended periods of not blinking or incomplete blinks. This usually happens in front of a computer or when you’re reading a book. My eyes never really felt tire when I use the computer, so I guess I must be concentrating really hard when I play games. Anyways, he suggested that I take breaks during my gaming sessions and also to use eye drops to lubricate my eye. He suggested something called Refresh Tears. He also mentioned that when playing 3D games, our body may become imbalance as our eye and ear coordination aren’t working as they normally do. This is something I refer to as 3D motion sickness, which I’ve had since I played Jedi Knight (the 1st one) for 10+ hours straight, so I tend to not play fast motion FPS.
Turns out my left eye has no change, but my right eye has almost a 20° shift. The doctor suggested that I get new glasses as it would be better for my eyes as the right eye would be straining at the moment to see clearer. He also suggested that I get anti-glare (which allows 100% of the light to go through instead of 80% which non-anti-glare glasses do). When I went to Costco this afternoon, I dropped by the Optical center to check out glasses. Our insurance provides up to $180 for eyeglasses (single lens), so I looked around and found a pair of frames that I liked. Including the lens and anti-reflective treatment, it came out to only $127.97. Costco is just way too cool.
However, looking at the receipt, that got me wondering, is there a difference between anti-glare and anti-reflective? According to TSP’s Anti-Glare vs. Anti-Reflective :
Anti-Glare deals with external sources of reflection off a surface – like bright sunlight or high ambient lighting conditions – and its impact on the readability of the image or information you are trying to read.
Unlike diffusion-based anti-glare solutions, Anti-Reflection considers all sources, both internal and external, that accumulate to reduce the light transmitted through the display window, thereby reducing the readability of the viewed image or information.
Though, I’m still not sure which is better.
Anyways, I then dropped by my local supermarket to pick up some eye drops and I couldn’t believe how expensive eye drops were! A tiny bottle for $10! Next time when I cry, I’ll store it up in a container so I can resell it later, which reminds me a whole slew of RPGs which has “tears of (fill in magical name)”. Didn’t Lord of the Rings also have tears of something?
Oh yah, does anyone know how often I’m suppose to be using eye drops? Cause the box doesn’t really mention any instructions/usage.
i suffer from occasional dry eyes too. it happens mostly when i wear contacts but also when i haven’t slept for a long time or stare at the computer screen too much. i’d say use the drops (if you’re gaming) once every 2-3 hours.. otherwise, just use it when you feel like your eyes are getting strained or tired.
i get motion sick from rpgs ALL THE TIME. liam makes fun of me constantly…i blame it on the fact that i grew up on 2d games and i can’t get accustomed to it. i don’t think i can play rpg for more than 10 min w/o getting sick…also, i tend to run my character into walls a lot.. haha. my 11 yr old sister, however, does just fine. go figure..