hello everybody my name is Matt and today I'm going to be talking about
nearsighted VR which is an augmented aid for the Android smartphone it
works on most phones and the concept is to display what's in the front camera
onto the display in stereoscopic view now that might not seem like much but
when you combine it with the Google cardboard or any other do it yourself
VR Displays what occurs is a seeing-eye aid which can help many
people with low vision now what is low vision well unfortunately there are some
people that can only see things really up close and unfortunately glasses and
other optics do not help that much so they will have devices for reading books
where they put a book under a camera and the display is right there in front of
them these are also individuals that will be very close to a computer screen
to try to read it now this was something that I started in 2007 with the friend
who actually had low vision at the time unfortunately since then we have haven't
spoken and you know people just drift apart so back in 2007 we had a
200-dollar VR display and a 640 by 480 camera color camera mounted on top now
we had successful tests and it worked but it was big bulky clunky and also
relatively expensive now there are also some low vision aids out there on the
market upwards of 1,500 to 2,000 dollars and even up to $4,000 and with near
sight our goal is to make it cheap affordable and easy to use basically the
app it's just click on the app it displays
camera and stereoscopic view and then you just click the close no ads open
source it does require Adobe AIR to run and the reason we did this is so we
could maximize compatibility for the app it does not require a gyroscope or
anything like that it literally is just taking what's on the front camera and
displaying it here in stereoscopic view now when would you use this some may ask
if you have low vision well if you are in a classroom setting or you are in a
church or an auditorium whatever the case may be this will allow you to
experience the world like I can and like many others can and see clearly now
obviously the performance of the app does depend on the screen resolution I
highly recommend an s4 or an S5 or higher for the app to function correctly
when combined with a display that has a headband it can be worn and you can
function throughout your day as you normally would and you can actually see
more clearly if you have low vision near blind legally blind or even nearsighted
if you're nearsighted obviously glasses will help you but you can also test this
out and see exactly how it works and it is a very light weight depending on your
phone and depending on the display you have personally I like to use the Google
cardboard for it because it's just something that's portable and it's the
whole love you just put it put the phone in and you're good to go
so I will leave some links below the download page the open source link and
also the med gadget article that was written on us about the app and if you
have any questions comments or concerns please feel free to ask me I have no
issue answering them and keep in mind this is a prototype and
that's why it's also open-source I would love to see improvements on this and I
hope it helps somebody have a great one