Originally Posted by
aa777888
There are no good solutions for presbyopia where refractive surgery is concerned. Your only choices are multifocal correction and monovision. Both really screw with your depth perception. You can try both by going to your eye doc and asking for contact lenses that do the same things.
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I've also tried progressive lenses. Again, I did not care for them, although I can understand how some might prefer that, especially with the FAA requirement for older pilots to demonstrate visual acuity at both 16 and 32 inches distance.
For flying I still very much prefer a set of plain old bifocals with a line set a little lower than what might be normal. I can easily meet the FAA requirement for 20/40 at 16 inches using the lower section, and 32 inches with the upper section. I've got bifocal sunglasses, too. They are the cat's meow and I wear them for everything, not just flying.
On the question of degraded depth perception:
(Apologies, not a rotorhead or NVG user. Not sure about the etiquette here - I didn't think I should spawn a new thread)
I have presbyopia (my reading glasses are +2). My distance vision
requires no correction but benefits from slight correction. I wear progressives to fly and they seem to work brilliantly, I have perfect acuity wherever in the field of view I need it. However, my landings are still pretty untidy and I wonder if my depth perception is screwed without me realising it. Is that a known thing? I thought progressives and varifocals were the same thing ? Is there any way to objectively measure depth perception (without causing alarm to the AME!) ? I used to drive with bifocal sunglasses, and I also found they were great. But I now wear the progressives as much as I can on the principal that I should train my brain to handle the input. Wondering now if I should try flying in the bifocal sunglasses and see if that's better - although I am reluctant to sacrifice the marginal improvement in distance acuity.