Vision

[EricM]

While learning this technique, has anyone struggled with controlling accommodation of the non-dominant eye?

I've been giving this another go recently, after previously deciding it wasn't ever going to work for me. I'm slowly starting to have some success, but I think I'm having some difficulty with my non-dominant eye. I can maintain convergence on the target (when I try really, really hard) and shift accommodation toward the front sight (still working on getting it all the way there consistently) but then things start to get weird. Sometimes accommodation of my non-dominant eye stays on (or at least near) the target while accommodation of the dominant eye is on (or at least near) the front sight. And sometimes my non-dominant eye just doesn't know what to do, and I think starts basically moving accommodation back and forth while maintaining convergence, leading to "waves" of bizarreness of the world outside the front sight -- sometimes everything turns grayish, like decreasing the contrast of an image. When I can stabilize it, sometimes everything (except the front sight) looks blurry, and sometimes everything (except the front sight) looks "embossed" for lack of a better term...the latter is when I'm pretty certain I'm holding a different plane of accommodation in each eye. I suspect what's happening is because I'm disregarding what's coming in from my non-dominant eye at the plane of the front sight, there's no feedback going to it saying "yes this is the right distance to accommodate to"...while simultaneously I am paying attention to its convergence on the target (because my convergence is prone to slipping). While seeing both the front sight and target simultaneously in focus seems like a dream, would my brain ever be able to sort that out if I could consistently reproduce that? Or maybe I need to pay a little more attention to the front sight image coming from my non-dominant eye in order to train it to accommodate to that plane? Hopefully that all makes sense, it's pretty trippy and the first time it happened I was seriously thinking about where the nearest bucket was located in case I was unable to hang on to my dinner.

[Mr_White]

While learning this technique, has anyone struggled with controlling accommodation of the non-dominant eye?

...

it's pretty trippy

Wow, sounds like it! Sorry I don't have much to suggest there. Your experience is not one I've had. I guess all I'd say is that I think the way I aim can be made to work well (if it works for your eyes and brain), so can shooting with one eye closed or squinted, and so can target focused shooting (especially with a high visibility front sight.)

[miller_man]

While learning this technique, has anyone struggled with controlling accommodation of the non-dominant eye?

I've been giving this another go recently, after previously deciding it wasn't ever going to work for me. I'm slowly starting to have some success, but I think I'm having some difficulty with my non-dominant eye. I can maintain convergence on the target (when I try really, really hard) and shift accommodation toward the front sight (still working on getting it all the way there consistently) but then things start to get weird. Sometimes accommodation of my non-dominant eye stays on (or at least near) the target while accommodation of the dominant eye is on (or at least near) the front sight. And sometimes my non-dominant eye just doesn't know what to do, and I think starts basically moving accommodation back and forth while maintaining convergence, leading to "waves" of bizarreness of the world outside the front sight -- sometimes everything turns grayish, like decreasing the contrast of an image. When I can stabilize it, sometimes everything (except the front sight) looks blurry, and sometimes everything (except the front sight) looks "embossed" for lack of a better term...the latter is when I'm pretty certain I'm holding a different plane of accommodation in each eye. I suspect what's happening is because I'm disregarding what's coming in from my non-dominant eye at the plane of the front sight, there's no feedback going to it saying "yes this is the right distance to accommodate to"...while simultaneously I am paying attention to its convergence on the target (because my convergence is prone to slipping). While seeing both the front sight and target simultaneously in focus seems like a dream, would my brain ever be able to sort that out if I could consistently reproduce that? Or maybe I need to pay a little more attention to the front sight image coming from my non-dominant eye in order to train it to accommodate to that plane? Hopefully that all makes sense, it's pretty trippy and the first time it happened I was seriously thinking about where the nearest bucket was located in case I was unable to hang on to my dinner.

Having just started to use these techniques myself in the last month or so and getting glasses as well (which really makes it fun) - I have experienced some of what your talking about. Some REALLY weird stuff can start to happen. I've found the more I work on it the better it gets. My brain seems to "learn?" to use the dominant eye's picture over everything else. But I had several sessions where I didn't think I could do it, or would be able to use it. Also really interesting/hard to learn - to use your eye to look at/move on a target that is out of focus - that can mess with my mind, but agin it has gotten better.

For me, one big thing I learned is - I can only hold it for so long. The more time I spend "converging/on different focal plane" (I forget which is which) the more different things come into play/weird stuff can start to happen. Since most of the time your only needing the sight picture for seconds at most when shooting/dry fire - I've been able to get along well with it and shoot a good bit more accurately (at least for me, which isn't saying much). All of it seems to get better and easier the more I practice and use it. Lately I've been working on shifting my plane on the start of the draw to catch the front sight in focus as I press the pistol out - its still a work in progress, but I'm hopeful.

All that to say - I at least have experienced some of what your saying. I think you should keep at it and see if it gets better/easier/more usable.

My biggest struggle is having one crisp front sight and the rear is fairly blurry/little doubled.

[EricM]

I think you're on to something with the time aspect of it. The weird stuff happens mostly when I'm trying to hold it a long time and then fine tune it; I was thinking that learning to fine tune it would help me isolate the muscles involved. So previously I'd been locking the convergence and then trying to manipulate accommodation. Tonight I tried doing the opposite, aggressively shifting the accommodation (just doing it, not thinking too much about it) and letting whatever happens to convergence happen. At first it was very noticeable that convergence was slipping, but the more times I went back and forth, the smaller the change in convergence. A few times I got into a groove and was able to bounce accommodation back and forth from target to front sight a bunch of times without convergence changing at all. It seems my brain is able to subconsciously correct the convergence more easily than it was able to adjust accommodation while actively maintaining convergence. In doing it this way now I also think more of my attention stayed on the front sight as it should...rather than trying to "test" convergence by observing whether or not the target was doubled, I just looked for whether the non-dominant image of the front sight jumped at all when I brought accommodation from the target to the front sight. I'll keep working on it!

[EricM]

Is it correct to say that the eyes should remain converged exactly at the desired point of aim throughout the entire shooting process?

I've never been consciously aware of it, but in the past I think I have usually followed the front sight. Meaning that once the gun was in my field of vision, I continually moved my dominant eye so it was always pointed directly at the top edge of the front sight and thus the front sight was in the center of my vision. On the draw, I would look at the front sight once I acquired it and move my eyes as the gun moved during extension onto the target. When transitioning, I'd snap my eyes to the next target but once the gun was (roughly) in position my eyes would move (slightly) to follow the front sight while fine tuning the sight picture as necessary. This was when shooting with my non-dominant eye closed, or with both eyes open but completely disregarding input from the non-dominant eye.

In contrast, it seems more efficient that the eyes remain absolutely fixed on the POA...and maybe that's the only way that makes any sense when convergence remains on the target. Going back and re-reading the original posts of this thread, I see it clearly referred to convergence on the "target spot" -- not just the target. In my mind though I was so focused on setting accommodation and convergence at different distances that I think I missed the importance of that detail. It wasn't until moving from vision exercises to dry fire/live fire drills that I realized I may still be missing a piece of the puzzle: the sights don't have to be exactly in the center of your vision to see them and process the sight picture...though obviously they'd be very close to the center if your aim was true.

Before proceeding further with this approach, I thought I'd reveal my ignorance and ask...is this what everybody else has been doing all along? When drawing, when tracking the sights during recoil, when transitioning, when lining up a precise shot, when shooting while moving?

[Mr_White]

Is it correct to say that the eyes should remain converged exactly at the desired point of aim throughout the entire shooting process?

I've never been consciously aware of it, but in the past I think I have usually followed the front sight. Meaning that once the gun was in my field of vision, I continually moved my dominant eye so it was always pointed directly at the top edge of the front sight and thus the front sight was in the center of my vision. On the draw, I would look at the front sight once I acquired it and move my eyes as the gun moved during extension onto the target. When transitioning, I'd snap my eyes to the next target but once the gun was (roughly) in position my eyes would move (slightly) to follow the front sight while fine tuning the sight picture as necessary. This was when shooting with my non-dominant eye closed, or with both eyes open but completely disregarding input from the non-dominant eye.

In contrast, it seems more efficient that the eyes remain absolutely fixed on the POA...and maybe that's the only way that makes any sense when convergence remains on the target. Going back and re-reading the original posts of this thread, I see it clearly referred to convergence on the "target spot" -- not just the target. In my mind though I was so focused on setting accommodation and convergence at different distances that I think I missed the importance of that detail. It wasn't until moving from vision exercises to dry fire/live fire drills that I realized I may still be missing a piece of the puzzle: the sights don't have to be exactly in the center of your vision to see them and process the sight picture...though obviously they'd be very close to the center if your aim was true.

Before proceeding further with this approach, I thought I'd reveal my ignorance and ask...is this what everybody else has been doing all along? When drawing, when tracking the sights during recoil, when transitioning, when lining up a precise shot, when shooting while moving?

EricM,

What I see you expressing now is what I think is correct.

It's much slower and less good to be following the front sight with the eyes during a target transition. Look at (converge on) the spot you want to hit, drive the sights to that spot, shoot the shot(s), look at (converge on) the next spot you want to hit, drive the sights to that spot, shoot the shot(s), etc., etc., etc. Decisionmaking will have to be inserted into that process where necessary, but that doesn't conflict much with the technical process - decisions aren't made by looking at the front sight!

It's true that the sights don't have to be in the center of the vision in order to observe them, but vision is distinctly better for a lot of people when the eyes are looking out the front of the eye sockets, rather than tilted. There are moments at the beginning of some target transitions where the eyes might tilt off to the side or wherever to first locate the next target, but as the gun follows the eyes, so should the head, so by the time the shot is being fired, the eyes are probably relatively centered in the eye sockets again.

Gabe

[EricM]

Thanks, I think that answers my question. Though I didn't mean that I had been following the front sight the whole way during a transition...it was more that any time I was actively using the sights (such as once the gun was brought over to the new target in a transition), at that point my eyes would move to follow the front sight as I made whatever adjustments were required before firing the next shot.

Bear with me, I want to be sure I'm being clear, so maybe an illustration will help. For simplicity, the following assumes monocular vision, as the distinction is just as relevant there. Say we're in a situation where the gun is pointed in roughly the right direction and now we need a sight picture...this shows two different sequences to that end. The blue crosshairs represent where the eye is pointed (the center of our vision).

Option A - What I've always done:
1. Eye is focused on and pointed at the target
2. Eye is focused on and pointed at the top of the front sight (gun has not moved, target has not moved, but the center of our vision has)
3. While sights are brought into alignment, eye moves as needed to stay pointed at the top of the front sight
4. Ready to fire




Option B - What I suspect I should be doing:
1. Eye is focused on and pointed at the target
2. Eye is focused on the front sight, eye remains fixed on POA
3. While sights are brought into alignment, eye remains fixed on POA
4. Ready to fire



So steps 1 and 4 are identical, but the difference in the intermediate process (which are obviously just points on a continuum vs. discrete steps) is that with Option A the eye is pointed at the front sight so the front sight is in the exact center of our vision, whereas with Option B the direction the eye is pointing never changes, such that until the sights are perfectly aligned, they are observed without being in the exact center of our vision.

[Mr_White]

Ok, I get what you are saying a little better now. Option A is still wrong (though less wrong than what I thought you were saying) and Option B is what is widely recognized as the 'right way.'

[EricM]

Thank you! Man, I've got even more to work on than I thought lol, but I'm excited at the possibility of a breakthrough. Will try to channel my frustration at somehow missing this all these years into motivation.

[Mr_White]

Just to add one thing - consistent grip and thus, index are really important parts of making your Option B workable. No need to move the eyes to the sights - they should show up already in near perfect or perfect alignment.