Vision Simulator — What the Patient Actually Sees
Pick a condition and a real photographed scene, and the simulator re-renders that scene the way a patient with the condition perceives it: the yellow-brown haze and glare of a dense cataract, the dense central blot of macular degeneration, the thinned periphery of advanced glaucoma, a homonymous hemianopia cut down the midline.
Severity is a slider, not a fixed preset, so you can watch a condition progress rather than see one frozen endpoint. Refractive error is expressed in dioptres rather than an abstract percentage, and the blur is computed from the same acuity model the phoropter uses, so a given prescription means the same thing in both tools.
It exists because describing visual loss to a patient, a family or a student in words almost never lands. A picture of their own street does.
Conditions simulated (21)
Refractive & optical
Focusing errors — the image lands in front of or behind the retina.
- Blurred vision (refractive error) (Myopia (nearsightedness), Hyperopia (farsightedness), Presbyopia, Astigmatism)
Media & light scatter
Cloudy or irregular optics scatter light before it reaches the retina.
- Cataract
- Halos around lights
- Glare & light scatter
- Starbursts
- Ghosting (monocular double vision)
- Loss of contrast sensitivity
Retinal & field loss
The retina itself is damaged — vision is lost or distorted in part of the field.
- Central scotoma (macular degeneration)
- Metamorphopsia (distortion)
- Peripheral / tunnel vision (glaucoma)
- Retinitis pigmentosa
- Diabetic retinopathy
- Floaters
Neurologic & entoptic
Phenomena arising in the visual pathway or from within the eye itself.
- Visual snow
- Blue-field entoptic phenomenon
- Migraine aura (scintillating scotoma)
- Trails (palinopsia)
Double vision
The two eyes are misaligned, so a single object is seen twice.
- Horizontal double vision
- Vertical double vision (hypertropia)
- Strabismus
Colour vision
Cone photopigment differences shift how colours are distinguished.
- Colour vision deficiency
Related tools
- Visual Pathway Simulator — field defects by lesion site
- Condition library — the clinical detail behind each condition above