VR found to restore severe short-sightedness in Japanese study

SoraNews24

2 days ago

Soon your mom might yell at you to stare at those darn video games more.
It's been suggested before that use of VR devices can have a positive effect on eyesight, but so far this has largely been from anecdotal evidence. Quite frankly, it does feel like wishful thinking that something fun can actually be good for your physical condition too.
However, a recent study done at Kwansei Gakuin University's Graduate School of Science and Engineering has shed more light on this subject. Their paper, presented at Interaction 2025, showed that playing a specially designed VR game made significant improvements in vision under certain circumstances.
The researchers had a group of 10 people without any overarching eye diseases play the game over six weeks at different intervals and measured the effect it had on their vision. The game was a simple target shooting one, in which players used their controllers to aim and shoot at circular targets that get pushed further back when hit. This makes players practice looking both up close and far into the distance.
▼ Unfortunately, that time Mr. Sato married an anime dreamboat in VR, the depth perception was very limited and he saw no improvements in vision. But what he did gain was much more precious.
Even with some participants playing as infrequently as once every three days, all of them showed improvement in vision compared to their ability before the study. More interestingly, the test subjects with moderate to severe myopia (short-sightedness) prior to the test saw a more significant improvement in line with their frequency of playing, but those with only mild myopia did not see such impressive results.
The reason for this is not certain but one possible cause is pseudomyopia, which has the same symptoms as short-sightedness but is caused by straining the eyes, often due to staring at screens too long. Pseudomyopia can progress to real myopia if untreated, but is reversible with eye training, like alternating between staring up close and far away or looking at stereoscopic images.
So, it is possible that the subjects who saw the biggest improvements were only having the pseudomyopia components of their bad eyesight reversed, whereas those with only a modest improvement were suffering from the more permanent condition of real myopia. This is also a possibility because of the fact the subjects were all young students taken from the school's information sciences course and likely spend a lot of time in front of computers.
But even if it is only treating pseudomyopia, which is an increasingly common ailment in this digital age and treating it can still ensure long-term eye health in young people. The fact that VR can have at least that much of an effect on people's vision generated a fair bit of optimism in online comments.
'What the?! This is amazing! I'll buy VR if this is released.'
'It does make you see in 3D, so maybe it really can help.'
'A doctor on YouTube said myopia cannot be reversed, so what's going on?'
'This won't help people with genetic short-sightedness because their eyes are naturally misaligned.'
'It makes sense since it forces you to focus. They say even the 3DS had benefits.'
'Recovering your eyes through video games feels like a dream.'
'It sounds like people who only recently became short-sighted have a chance.'
The researchers say more work is needed to further verify these results and determine if this is simply remedying pseudomyopia or if benefits to regular myopia are occurring as well. Mark Zuckerberg and Sony really ought to be shoveling money at these researchers, because I'm pretty sure I'd buy a VR device if this turns out to be true as well. After all, the choice between paying a few hundred bucks to play video games and paying a few thousand for someone to use a deli slicer on my eyeballs so they can shoot lasers at them isn't a choice at all.
Source: Interaction 2025, MoguLive, My Game News Flash
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