Originally Posted by
flyrodr
TL: DR - - - One size doesn't fit all.
I've been through multiple discussions with my eye doc about shooting glasses. He said, first off, accept that there are many variations in people's vision, caused by all sorts of things (eye geometry, starting eye correction, etc.). And that people were often looking for different "solutions": distance to sharpest focus (front sight, best compromise of focus on sight and target, etc), position (tilt) of head, others. In other words, if not endless variables, plenty enough to not generalize or assume that one person's solution might be best for you. Clearly, though, it's up to the shooter to describe what he wants so the doc (and optician) understand, and up to the doc and optician to keep up with what's out there that might work.
I have progressive lenses in my daily wear glasses, and I have a strong correction (+7). They're OK. But there's no front sight focus. Doc let me bring in gun (fake actually, but representative of my typical), and he put various corrections on me so I could see front hard front sight focus did to distance, and several in-between that distance and normal distance lenses.
Then we talked about whether lenses could be ground with a section of what seemed to be best compromise correction to me so that that section was where it needed to be for shooting, and yet I could see normally and read normally in other sections. Just didn't seem it would work - - - for me. I have to wear relatively small lenses, because with the distance correction needed, the grind gets really thick out toward the edges. Making the lens larger, with more curve, makes the problem worse - - - true coke bottle lenses.
So, I ended up with a pair of range glasses that has the right lens corrected just for front sight focus (actually somewhat past front sight, while keeping the sight picture decently sharp). Left lens has normal distance correction. Works OK, but wouldn't on the street. And truthfully, they don't work too well at distances beyond 15 yards or so.
Mostly, though, I'm transitioning to red dots . . . er, PMOs. Still not up to satisfactory speed, but gaining. Accuracy is vastly improved.