My glasses are creating a weird depth illusion on handhelds
Handhelds are my favorite type of consoles, so I've recently jailbroke my Vita and my 3DS, as they've been abandoned by their companies and I wanted to play some stuff again. While doing the breaking, I noticed some weird depth effect on the Vita, but thought it had something to do with the screen (I have the OLED version) and didn't pay too much attention (and it's been a long time since I last turned it on). Except that I then went to test a Castlevania game in a GBA emulator and, well, there was something wrong with the logo, as if it had the wrong depth for the art in some parts.
But I still didn't pay too much attention.
Then I took my glasses off for a second and the screen suddenly looked normal (I'm nearsighted, so I see things well enough if they are close). Put my glasses back and things had the weird depth illusion again. Fascinating stuff, so I checked some more things. Here's what I noticed:
- The depth illusion only happens in (apparently) high-contrast, low-resolution environments. We are talking about black backgrounds with red, white, and cyan text, or images with so low resolution you can count the pixels.
- Red/orange colors always seem to be on top, with white in the middle, and cyan/green somewhere in the back (the logo on Castlevania Aria of Sorrow has some parts of the image feeling like they are coming out of the screen, for example).
- It only happens with static images.
- It's not stereoscopic, meaning the depth illusion is still present with only one eye open.
- It doesn't happen with "high resolution" games, like titles native to the Vita.
Pretty bizarre, right? And somewhat specific. The effect isn't that strong, but once noticed, it can become annoying, especially now that I know it's caused by wearing stuff over my eyes. So, what's causing it?
No idea.
I have a theory, though, that the different coatings on the lenses (there are quite a few) might be refracting different light wavelengths to different parts (or depths) of my corneas. Or maybe it's caused by the lens's angles, because they don't perfectly match our eyes. I know nothing about optics and physics (or ophthalmology), so I'm not sure if this is even possible. It could also be that something's messing with depth perception in the image processing part of my brain when I put my glasses on — which, to be honest, is a bit worrying if true.
In any case, I don't notice this on my phone (an iPhone 14 Pro) but, while jailbreaking the 3DS, the effect was back, first appearing in the GodMode9 screen and then in the Rosalina menu. At least now I know it doesn't happen only with the Vita screen.
So, yeah, I'm not sure about what to do with this information. Maybe I'm tripping, maybe someone out there will read this and think "it kinda makes sense" and figure out the reason. One day maybe I'll do some testing on the iPhone, trying to simulate handheld screens somehow and try to figure out what the thresholds to this fake depth illusion are (if it's not an issue with my brain, that is).