A directory of vetted specialty eye care practices

Vision Simulator

Nineteen interactive simulators that show how common eye conditions change everyday sight. Step through the stages, switch the scene, and see the difference for yourself — then take what you find to an eye doctor who can put a name to it.

Find a Practice
A patient during an eye examination

How To Use
These Simulators

Show It, Don't Describe It

Visual symptoms are hard to put into words. Find the simulator that comes closest to what you experience, set the stage or strength to match, and bring it to your appointment.

They are awareness and education tools, not medical devices. Every simulation on this page is a plausible approximation built from published clinical descriptions — but vision varies enormously from person to person, and no simulation can reproduce what any individual actually sees. Nothing here is a basis for diagnosis. If something about your sight has changed, see an eye care professional.

No. Very different conditions can look similar in a simulation, and the same condition looks different in different people. What these tools are good for is the opposite direction: finding the effect that most resembles what you experience, then showing it to your eye doctor. Describing visual symptoms in words is hard; pointing at a picture is much easier.

If you have a specific symptom, start there — flashes and floaters under PVD or Sudden Vision Changes, wavy lines under Macular Degeneration, glare at night under Cataracts, fluctuating blur under Dry Eye. If you are exploring generally, the whole-picture journeys (aging eye, diabetic eye, high myopia, screen fatigue) show how real changes tend to arrive in combination rather than one at a time.

Only partially. Disability simulations can misrepresent lived experience — they show a moment of altered vision without the adaptation, context and skill that people living with vision loss develop over time. Treat them as a starting point for a conversation, and pair them with first-hand accounts.

For most healthy adults, every one to two years, and annually from around age 60. Annual dilated exams are recommended for anyone with diabetes, glaucoma or a family history of eye disease, and for people who are highly short-sighted. Children should be examined between 6 and 12 months of age, around age 3, and before starting school. Any sudden change is a reason to be seen straight away, regardless of when your last exam was.

Glaucoma

Side vision fades first — gradually, and almost always unnoticed.

Opens at the Advanced stage on a reading scene. Keep your eyes on the centre of the picture — the loss sits out at the edges, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed. Step back to Normal, Early and Moderate to see how it builds.

What You're Looking At

Glaucoma damages the optic nerve, and it takes peripheral (side) vision first. Central vision — the part used for reading and recognising faces — usually stays sharp until late in the disease.

Notice that it is not a black tunnel. It is a soft, washed-out fade toward grey. Because the brain fills in the missing areas, most people never notice it happening, which is why glaucoma is usually found on a routine eye exam rather than reported as a symptom.

How Eye Doctors Help

Vision already lost to glaucoma cannot be brought back — but eye pressure can be lowered to protect what remains. That is why routine pressure checks and optic-nerve imaging matter so much, and why glaucoma is usually caught in the exam chair rather than by symptoms.

An eye doctor typically combines automated visual-field testing, tonometry, and optic-nerve and nerve-fibre (OCT/RNFL) imaging to detect change early and track it over time. Treatment may include pressure-lowering drops, laser, or surgery depending on the type and stage.

Find A Practice Near You

Macular Degeneration (AMD)

Central detail fades while side vision is kept — the opposite of glaucoma.

Opens on Wet AMD over an Amsler grid so the distortion is obvious. Stare at the centre dot and watch the straight lines bend. Step back through Geographic Atrophy, Early Dry AMD and Normal, or switch the scene to faces and reading.

What You're Looking At

AMD affects the macula — the small central part of the retina responsible for sharp, detailed vision — while side vision is kept. Most AMD is the slow dry type, which thins the macula over years and blurs or blanks out the very centre of the view.

A smaller number of people develop wet AMD, where new blood vessels leak under the retina. Its signature is metamorphopsia: straight lines — door frames, window blinds, lines of text — suddenly look wavy or bent.

How Eye Doctors Help

Dry AMD is monitored with dilated exams and retinal imaging (OCT), and certain nutritional supplement formulas can slow progression in intermediate stages. An Amsler grid at home helps spot change early.

Wet AMD is treated with anti-VEGF injections, and outcomes are strongly time-dependent — the earlier treatment starts, the more vision is preserved.

When To Act Quickly

New wavy or bent straight lines, or a sudden blur or blank spot in the centre of your vision, should be checked within days, not weeks. This can be the first sign of wet AMD, and treatment works best when it begins early.

Find A Practice Near You

Retinal Conditions

Macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, vein and artery blockages, and inherited retinal disease.

The widest simulator on this page — 14 stages covering early and late AMD, geographic atrophy, mild to severe diabetic retinopathy, vein and artery occlusions, retinitis pigmentosa and Stargardt disease. Opens on diabetic retinopathy; step through the rest.

What You're Looking At

The retina is the light-sensing layer at the back of the eye, and its centre — the macula — provides the sharp, detailed vision used for reading and recognising faces. Retinal conditions tend to affect that central detail, which is the opposite of what glaucoma does.

Different diseases leave different signatures: diabetic retinopathy scatters dark blots across the view; vein occlusions blur and blotch it suddenly; retinitis pigmentosa closes in from the edges as a ring then a tunnel; Stargardt disease affects the centre in much younger people.

How Eye Doctors Help

Most retinal disease is silent early and detectable only on a dilated exam or retinal scan — which is why anyone with diabetes, high blood pressure or a family history of retinal disease is advised to have regular dilated exams.

Depending on the diagnosis, care may involve retinal imaging (OCT and angiography), laser treatment, intravitreal injections, or referral to a retina specialist. Systemic control of blood sugar and blood pressure is a core part of protecting the retina.

Find A Practice Near You

Cataracts & Glare

A clouding lens scatters light, dulls colour and turns headlights into starbursts.

Opens at the Moderate stage on a night-driving scene, where cataract symptoms show up first for most people. Step through Early to Advanced, and compare the three cataract types — nuclear, cortical and posterior subcapsular.

What You're Looking At

A cataract is a clouding of the eye's natural lens. It is not a simple blur: the cloudy lens scatters light, so contrast drops, colours look dull and yellowed, and bright lights bloom into glare and haloes — especially at night.

The three types behave differently. Nuclear cataract yellows and blurs distance gradually. Cortical cataract spokes in from the edge and causes glare. Posterior subcapsular cataract sits right behind the visual axis, progresses faster, and hits reading and bright-light vision hardest.

How Eye Doctors Help

Early cataracts are often managed with an updated glasses prescription, better task lighting and anti-glare lens coatings. There is no need to rush surgery while vision still meets daily needs.

When a cataract starts limiting driving, reading or work, cataract surgery replaces the cloudy lens with a clear intraocular lens (IOL). It is one of the most commonly performed and most successful procedures in medicine, and the choice of lens — monofocal, toric for astigmatism, or extended-depth-of-focus — is decided together with the surgeon.

Find A Practice Near You

Refractive Errors

Blur that glasses, contact lenses or vision correction surgery can usually fix.

Opens on Normal (corrected) — sharp at every distance, which is what correction restores. Step through Myopia, Hyperopia, Astigmatism and Presbyopia, and watch which panel of the Near / Medium / Far scene goes soft.

What You're Looking At

Refractive errors are the most common — and most correctable — reason vision is blurry. The eye simply does not bring light to a sharp focus on the retina.

  • Myopia (short-sight): distance blurs, close-up stays sharp.
  • Hyperopia (long-sight): near work blurs and tires the eyes.
  • Astigmatism: a directional smear or ghosting, at every distance.
  • Presbyopia: age-related near blur that starts in the mid-40s.

How Eye Doctors Help

Glasses and contact lenses correct all four, and a current prescription is the starting point for every one of them. Specialty contact lenses — toric, multifocal, scleral and rigid gas-permeable designs — handle prescriptions that standard soft lenses cannot.

For people who would rather not depend on glasses, laser vision correction (LASIK and PRK), implantable collamer lenses (ICL) and refractive lens exchange are options worth discussing. Which one fits — if any — depends on prescription, corneal thickness and eye health, and is decided after a full evaluation.

Find A Practice Near You

Dry Eye, Screens & The Cornea

Fluctuating, hazy vision that clears for a second after a blink.

Opens on dry eye over a reading scene. Switch between digital eye strain, keratoconus (early and advanced), corneal swelling and pterygium to see how each one distorts the eye's front window differently.

What You're Looking At

The cornea and the tear film sitting on it form the eye's clear front window — and together they do most of the eye's focusing. When that surface is unstable, vision turns hazy, glary and fluctuating, often clearing for a moment right after a blink.

Dry eye and screen use go together: people blink far less while concentrating on a screen, so the tear film breaks up between blinks. Keratoconus is different — the cornea itself thins and bulges into a cone, adding irregular astigmatism and ghosted, doubled images that glasses cannot fully correct.

How Eye Doctors Help

Dry eye care is layered: artificial tears and lid hygiene first, then treatments aimed at the cause — meibomian gland (oil layer) therapy, prescription anti-inflammatory drops, punctal plugs, or in-office procedures such as intense pulsed light. The 20-20-20 habit and screen setup changes help with strain.

Keratoconus is managed with specialty contact lenses and, when it is progressing, corneal cross-linking to stabilise the cornea. Catching it early — often in the teens or twenties — is what preserves vision.

Find A Practice Near You

Posterior Vitreous Detachment & Floaters

New floaters and flashes as the gel separates — usually harmless, occasionally a warning.

Opens on Normal vision so there is a baseline. Step forward through New floaters → Acute PVD → Retinal tear → Retinal detachment to see how the warning signs differ from ordinary floaters.

What You're Looking At

The inside of the eye is filled with a clear gel called the vitreous. With age it shrinks and peels away from the retina. That is a posterior vitreous detachment, and it is a normal part of ageing — most people experience one eventually.

It usually shows up as a sudden increase in floaters — specks, threads, or a ring-shaped one called a Weiss ring — sometimes with brief arcs of light at the edge of vision. Floaters are most obvious against something bright and plain, like a clear sky or a white wall.

How Eye Doctors Help

New floaters and flashes need a dilated exam to check the retina for a tear. Most PVDs turn out to be harmless, and the floaters settle and fade over weeks to months once anything sight-threatening has been ruled out.

When a tear or detachment is found, laser or cryotherapy can seal a tear, while surgical repair — vitrectomy, scleral buckling or pneumatic retinopexy — treats a detachment. Outcomes are much better when it is caught before the macula is involved.

When It's An Emergency

Most posterior vitreous detachments are harmless. But the same separation can tear the retina — and a tear can progress to a retinal detachment, which threatens sight permanently.

Get seen urgently if you notice a sudden shower of new floaters, repeated flashes of light, or a dark curtain or shadow spreading across your vision. Do not wait for a routine appointment.

Find A Practice Near You

Visual Field Loss & The Brain

When the same side of vision goes missing in both eyes.

Opens on right homonymous hemianopia over a reading scene — the pattern most often seen after a stroke. Stare at the central cross; the missing half stays fixed to one side. Switch to left hemianopia, bitemporal hemianopia, quadrantanopia, altitudinal defects, optic neuritis and optic atrophy.

What You're Looking At

Vision is processed along a pathway that runs from the eyes, through the optic nerves and chiasm, to the back of the brain. Damage anywhere along it removes a predictable slice of the visual field — and where the slice sits tells clinicians where the damage is.

After a stroke, the classic pattern is homonymous hemianopia: the same half of vision is missing in both eyes. People bump into things on one side, lose their place while reading, or miss half the food on a plate — often without realising the field is gone at all.

How Eye Doctors Help

Field loss is documented with formal visual-field testing, and the pattern guides whether the cause sits in the eye, the optic nerve or the brain. Sudden onset is treated as a medical emergency, because it can signal a stroke.

Where the cause sits outside the eye, care is shared with neurology. Low-vision rehabilitation, scanning-and-reading training and prism systems can meaningfully improve day-to-day function even when the field loss itself is permanent.

Find A Practice Near You

Eye Teaming & Double Vision

When the two eyes don't work together — doubling, overlap and strain.

Opens on strabismus over a reading scene. Switch to convergence insufficiency — the near-work pattern behind a lot of unexplained headaches and reading fatigue — and to general diplopia.

What You're Looking At

The two eyes normally point at exactly the same spot, and the brain fuses their two images into one. When they do not aim together, the result is a second, offset image: doubling, overlap, or a faint 'ghost' beside what you are looking at.

Convergence insufficiency is the version most often missed. The eyes struggle to turn inward for near work, so reading brings words that swim, blur or double, plus headaches and fatigue — symptoms that get blamed on concentration rather than on vision.

How Eye Doctors Help

A binocular vision assessment measures eye alignment, focusing and teaming at both distance and near — which is not the same as a standard sight test for glasses.

Treatment options include prism in glasses, vision therapy for convergence and eye-teaming problems, and eye muscle surgery for larger or constant misalignments. New-onset double vision in an adult always needs prompt evaluation, because it can point to a neurological cause.

Find A Practice Near You

Colour Vision Deficiency

Rarely a world without colour — usually certain colours that become hard to tell apart.

Opens on deuteranopia, the most common type, over a colour test card. Switch between all seven types — protanopia, tritanopia, the milder 'anomalous' versions, and achromatopsia — and hold Compare to see normal colour.

What You're Looking At

'Colour blindness' almost never means seeing no colour at all. In the great majority of cases, certain colours simply become hard to tell apart — most often reds and greens, which is why the red-green types affect roughly 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women.

Most colour vision deficiency is inherited and stable for life. Colour vision that changes is a different matter: acquired colour loss — especially in one eye, or a new difficulty with blues and yellows — can signal optic nerve or retinal disease.

How Eye Doctors Help

Colour vision is checked with standard plate and arrangement tests. Confirming the type and severity matters practically: some careers have colour vision standards, and children benefit from teachers knowing before colour-coded classroom material becomes a problem.

Inherited colour vision deficiency cannot be cured, but colour-filter lenses help some people distinguish confusable shades, and simple adaptations go a long way. Any newly acquired change in colour vision should be evaluated promptly.

Find A Practice Near You

Visual Phenomena

Visual snow, floaters, haloes, night vision, migraine aura and other everyday visual experiences.

Opens on visual snow at moderate strength. Switch to floaters, haloes around lights, night blindness, migraine aura, nystagmus, oscillopsia and Charles Bonnet — and drag the slider until it matches what you actually see.

What You're Looking At

Not everything about vision is a matter of eye structure — some experiences are about how vision behaves. Visual snow looks like a faint layer of TV static laid over everything, in the light and in the dark, and it does not go away when you blink.

These are notoriously hard to describe in an exam room. That is the point of this simulator: find the effect that matches what you see, set the strength, and show it to your eye doctor. It is far more useful than trying to put it into words.

How Eye Doctors Help

Several of these have an eye-related cause worth ruling out first — glare and haloes from a developing cataract, drifting floaters from the vitreous, fluctuating vision from dry eye, poor night vision from an uncorrected prescription or a retinal condition. A comprehensive dilated exam is how those are identified or excluded.

Visual snow itself is generally understood to arise in the brain's visual processing rather than in the eye. Where the cause sits outside the scope of eye care, the right next step is a referral to neurology rather than being left guessing.

Find A Practice Near You

Infant Vision Development

How a baby's vision sharpens, gains contrast and gains colour over the first year.

Opens at Newborn. Step forward through 1 month, 2–3 months, 4–6 months and 8–12 months to watch sharpness, contrast and colour arrive — and hold Compare at any point to see adult vision.

What You're Looking At

Newborns see the world blurry, low in contrast and almost colourless, and focus best at roughly a foot away — about the distance to a caregiver's face while being held. Everything beyond that is a soft wash of light and shape.

Over the first year, acuity improves from around 20/400 toward near-adult levels, contrast sensitivity and colour discrimination mature, and depth perception (stereopsis) emerges at about 3 to 6 months. Ages are typical ranges — individual development varies.

How Eye Doctors Help

Because so much visual development happens before a child can describe a problem, guidelines recommend a first comprehensive eye exam between 6 and 12 months of age, another around age 3, and again before starting school.

Early exams catch the conditions that depend on early treatment — amblyopia (lazy eye), strabismus (eye turn) and significant uncorrected prescriptions. Treated early, outcomes are excellent; treated late, some vision loss becomes permanent.

Find A Practice Near You

Sudden Vision Changes

Flashes, a shower of floaters, a curtain across your sight — the signs that mean act now.

Opens on retinal detachment — the dark curtain. Switch between a retinal tear, flashes of light, acute PVD and vitreous bleeding to see how each warning sign presents.

What You're Looking At

Some vision changes are emergencies. A sudden burst of flashes or floaters, a dark curtain creeping across the field, or bleeding into the vitreous can threaten sight — and are far more treatable when caught within hours or days rather than weeks.

The common thread is sudden. A floater that has drifted around for years is very different from a shower of new ones that appeared this morning.

How Eye Doctors Help

Urgent symptoms warrant a same-day dilated examination. Eye care practices reserve capacity for exactly this, and it is appropriate to say clearly on the phone that the symptoms are new and sudden.

A retinal tear found early can often be sealed in the office with laser or cryotherapy, preventing a detachment altogether. Once a detachment involves the macula, the recovery ceiling drops — which is why the time between symptom and exam matters more than almost anything else here.

Do Not Wait For A Routine Appointment

Seek urgent eye care — the same day — for a sudden shower of new floaters, repeated flashes of light, a dark curtain or shadow moving across your vision, sudden loss of vision in one eye, or new distortion of straight lines.

If sudden vision loss comes with severe eye pain, a red eye, haloes and nausea, or with weakness, numbness or slurred speech, treat it as a medical emergency and seek emergency care immediately.

Find A Practice Near You

Sudden Vision Loss In One Eye

Eight causes of sudden monocular vision loss, side by side.

Opens on sudden blackout (CRAO). Step through a vein occlusion, a detachment curtain, a shower of floaters from bleeding, sudden distortion from wet AMD, painful haloes and mist from angle-closure, and painless loss with jaw or scalp pain from giant cell arteritis.

What You're Looking At

Sudden loss or change of vision in one eye is one of the few genuinely time-critical situations in eye care. Several causes are reversible — but only within hours.

A central retinal artery occlusion is a stroke of the eye and is treated as a stroke-equivalent emergency. Giant cell arteritis can take the second eye within days if it is not treated, which is why painless vision loss alongside jaw pain, scalp tenderness, headache or shoulder stiffness in someone over 50 is an emergency in its own right.

How Eye Doctors Help

Each of these has a different pathway: emergency stroke assessment for an artery occlusion, urgent steroids and blood tests for suspected giant cell arteritis, same-week injections for wet AMD, urgent surgery for a macula-threatening detachment, and immediate pressure-lowering for acute angle-closure.

What they share is that the right response is to be seen now, not to wait and see whether it settles.

This One Is An Emergency By Definition

Sudden vision loss in one eye — painless or painful — means seeking care immediately. Contact an eye doctor urgently or go to an emergency department. Some causes have a treatment window measured in hours.

Find A Practice Near You

The Aging Eye

As eyes age, several small changes tend to arrive together and add up.

Opens at Reading gets harder. Each step adds the next change rather than replacing it — early cataract, then floaters, then early macular change — so you can see how they compound.

What You're Looking At

Most people notice several small eye changes as they get older: needing more light and longer arms to read, a little haze and glare, drifting floaters, and sometimes changes right in the centre of vision.

Individually each is common and manageable. What this simulator shows is the compounding — which is usually what people are describing when they say their vision 'just isn't what it was'.

How Eye Doctors Help

Most of the list is highly manageable: reading glasses or progressives for presbyopia, cataract surgery when it starts limiting daily life, reassurance and monitoring for benign floaters.

The part that needs watching is the macula. Annual dilated exams from around age 60 — earlier with family history — catch macular change while it is still early enough to act on.

Find A Practice Near You

The Diabetic Eye

Diabetes can affect the eye in several ways at once.

Opens at Retinopathy over a reading scene. Step forward to severe retinopathy, then add macular swelling, then earlier cataract — the way these changes actually stack up in a diabetic eye.

What You're Looking At

People with diabetes often have more than one eye change at the same time. Retinopathy scatters dark patches across the field, macular swelling blurs the very centre, and cataracts tend to develop earlier than they otherwise would.

Critically, early and even moderate diabetic retinopathy causes no symptoms at all. By the time vision changes are noticeable, the disease is usually well established — which is the entire reason screening exists.

How Eye Doctors Help

Everyone with diabetes is advised to have a dilated eye exam at least once a year, regardless of how good their vision feels. Retinal imaging and OCT scanning detect changes long before they are visible to the person.

Treatment ranges from tighter blood sugar and blood pressure control through to laser treatment and intravitreal injections for macular oedema or proliferative disease. Blood sugar control remains the single most powerful protective factor.

Find A Practice Near You

High Myopia

Very short-sighted eyes carry a few extra long-term risks beyond thick glasses.

Opens at Strong short-sight. Step forward to add earlier cataract, macular change and higher glaucoma risk — the long-term picture that glasses alone do not address.

What You're Looking At

Being very short-sighted means distance is blurry without correction — but there is a second story. A highly myopic eye is physically stretched and longer than average, and that stretching thins the retina at the back.

That raises the long-term likelihood of earlier cataract, myopic macular changes, peripheral retinal thinning and detachment, and open-angle glaucoma. It is why regular dilated exams matter even when glasses or contacts are working perfectly.

How Eye Doctors Help

For adults with high myopia, the priority is surveillance: dilated peripheral retinal exams, optic-nerve imaging, and knowing the warning signs of retinal detachment.

For children, the priority is slowing progression before the eye stretches further. Myopia management — low-dose atropine drops, orthokeratology, and specially designed daily contact lenses or spectacle lenses — is now standard practice and can meaningfully reduce final prescription and lifetime risk.

Find A Practice Near You

Dry Eye & Screen Fatigue

Long hours on screens dry the eyes and blur the day.

Opens at Dry eye. Step forward to add screen fatigue on top — the combination behind most end-of-workday eye complaints.

What You're Looking At

Blink rate drops sharply during concentrated screen work. The tear film breaks up between blinks, so vision blurs and then clears again with each blink — the fluctuating quality that distinguishes dry eye from a simple prescription problem.

Add glare, small text, a screen positioned too high and long uninterrupted sessions, and eyes tire quickly. The symptoms are real even though a standard sight test may come back perfectly normal.

How Eye Doctors Help

Practical steps come first: the 20-20-20 habit (every 20 minutes, look 20 feet away for 20 seconds), positioning the screen slightly below eye level, controlling glare and room humidity, and lubricating drops.

When symptoms persist, a dry eye evaluation looks for the underlying pattern — tear volume, tear stability, and meibomian gland function — because evaporative dry eye, aqueous-deficient dry eye and inflammatory dry eye are treated differently.

Find A Practice Near You

The Cataract Journey

From a clouding lens, through surgery, to clear vision again.

Opens at Cataract develops. Walk the whole path: mature cataract, clear vision after surgery, the occasional return of haze months or years later (PCO), and clear again after a quick YAG laser.

What You're Looking At

A cataract clouds slowly over years, then routine surgery replaces the cloudy lens with a clear intraocular lens and vision usually clears immediately.

Sometimes, months or years afterwards, the thin membrane behind the new lens hazes over. This is called posterior capsule opacification, or a 'secondary cataract' — it is common, it is not the cataract returning, and a painless few-minute YAG laser clears it in the office.

How Eye Doctors Help

The timing of cataract surgery is a shared decision, based on whether vision still meets daily needs rather than on how the cataract looks.

The bigger conversation is the lens implant. Monofocal, toric (for astigmatism), extended-depth-of-focus and multifocal lenses all trade off differently between spectacle independence, night-time glare and cost — and the right choice depends on the individual eye, lifestyle and expectations.

Find A Practice Near You

Important Disclaimer

These simulators are awareness and education tools — not medical devices. Vision varies from person to person; what you see here is a plausible approximation, not medically accurate for any individual and not a basis for diagnosis. If something about your sight has changed, see an eye care professional.

Disability simulations can misrepresent lived experience. They are a starting point for a conversation — pair them with first-hand accounts from people living with vision loss. Nothing on this page replaces a comprehensive eye examination, and no information here should be used to delay seeking care.

Seeing Something
You Can't Explain?

If one of these simulations matched what you experience, that is worth an appointment — not worry. Bring the simulator with you: showing an eye doctor exactly what you see is one of the most useful things you can do in an exam room.

Find A Practice

Related Resources

Understanding Glaucoma
Macular Degeneration Explained
Dry Eye Causes And Treatment
Myopia Management For Children
What To Expect From Cataract Surgery
Find A Specialty Eye Care Practice