Talk to me about glasses

SixPapaCharlie

SixPapaCharlie

May the force be with you
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Aug 8, 2013
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I am 47 and my eyes are going bad. I have a pair of prescription glasses for the computer, I have readers for medicine labels and now I need something for distance.
Do most people carry around 3 pair of glasses?

I got progressives which were great when sitting at a desk. but they suck for flying. when I look down at the runway, the bottom part of the lens which is for close up is blurry and generally any situation when moving my head, things get a little warped.

I am looking into bi focals but for the non magnified part, would I get computer distance or long distance?
What is the generally accepted solution for people that have aging eyes, not near or far sighted, just all around sucky vision?
 
I have progressives. These give me a moderate astigmatism and distance correction while removing most of the distance boost so I can read close up. The only other set I have is one with the break point on the near-distant point set way up high that I use when on the computers (where my entire world is pretty much 18-24" away).

I get multiples of each form Zenni Optical which is pretty easy to deal with and cheap (with even an additional Veteran's discount if you so qualify).
 
I have had progressives for many years. I have no problem flying with them.

One thing is, you do have to learn to turn your head, not just your eyes when in the closer distance portion of the lens. That area is fairly narrow and moving your eyes left/right is not a good thing.
 
I only have experience with one pair, but I've read a lot of people say that you need to buy the "premium" quality lens which ensures that the transition between near/far corrections in the lens is smoother and that there is less distortion on the left/right edges. I see on Zenni that I can choose to pay extra for the premium version of progressive lens. But again I don't have first-hand knowledge about the cheaper one.
 
I'm not as old as you so I'm still using single vision, but I know a place you can get 10% off with code "JPS" :biggrin:
 
OP failed to use this thread opportunity to drop a 'flying eyes' reference 0/10 would not recommend.


also, progressives full time (by choice, not cause I'm getting old, which I'm definitely not) and have zero issues flying with them. true, you don't get the full peripheral vision benefits that non-glasses wearing peeps get but you get used to it pretty quick. yes, you have to turn your head sometimes. btw the first pair of progressives I knew the second I put them on my face something wasn't right. went to another place and got a much better quality pair and was fine almost as soon as I put them on.
 
Baked Potato said:
I only have experience with one pair, but I've read a lot of people say that you need to buy the "premium" quality lens which ensures that the transition between near/far corrections in the lens is smoother and that there is less distortion on the left/right edges. I see on Zenni that I can choose to pay extra for the premium version of progressive lens. But again I don't have first-hand knowledge about the cheaper one.
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Correct. People that go with cheap progressives have problems. This is not an area to try to save money on.

I wear Varilux lenses and have for decades. Zero problems flying, driving or anything else.
 
I turned 60 recently, and wear a primary -7.0 lens - significant correction. I recently swapped from progressive glasses to multi-focal contact lenses. These things are pure black magic - absolutely amazing. Range of focus is fantastic, can easily see distance at about 20/15 (corrected) and focus on the instrument panel and kneeboard without any need for a separate pair of glasses. They are a bit expensive, but worth every penny.

The best part is that I can wear sunglasses again.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I am 47 and my eyes are going bad. I have a pair of prescription glasses for the computer, I have readers for medicine labels and now I need something for distance.
Do most people carry around 3 pair of glasses?

I got progressives which were great when sitting at a desk. but they suck for flying. when I look down at the runway, the bottom part of the lens which is for close up is blurry and generally any situation when moving my head, things get a little warped.

I am looking into bi focals but for the non magnified part, would I get computer distance or long distance?
What is the generally accepted solution for people that have aging eyes, not near or far sighted, just all around sucky vision?
Click to expand...
How long have you had your progressives? Every time I get an updated prescription it takes my eyes a couple weeks to remap to the new lenses. But once that's done, I'm a big fan. Size of lens does matter though. You can't have small/modern looking frames and have progressives work. The glasses I was wearing at Osh were progressives, BTW, and were big enough to handle progressive lenses without trouble.

I also have dedicated computer glasses with just the close up prescription. I could see fine with progressives, but didn't like having to lift my head and look through the bottom of the lens. And since I've remote worked for 14 years now, it matters what I look like on a webcam and that head position just looks weird.
 
gdwindowpane said:
LASIK
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In America, this is only for people with lots of disposable income.

Although I will say my 70 and 80 year old family members all have 20/20 because they were all able to get lens replacement to correct cataracts which is covered by insurance. I am jealous of them. I would love to be 20/20 again uncorrected.
 
Jim K said:
I'm not as old as you so I'm still using single vision, but I know a place you can get 10% off with code "JPS" :biggrin:
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Ha I just got off the phone with FE today. They are actually pretty knowledgeable about regular glasses not just sun protection. He is going to let me meet with their eye guy and discuss a solution but its a few weeks out.
 
eman1200 said:
btw the first pair of progressives I knew the second I put them on my face something wasn't right. went to another place and got a much better quality pair and was fine almost as soon as I put them on.
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I am wondering if this might be the problem. I told them something doesn't seem right and they said, it can take a couple months to get used to.
Also, I left them in a rental car in South Dakota last month so I am in the market for another pair. :(
 
LASIK

I went through that stage myself.
My eyesight was always significantly better than 20/20... I could see distance better than most and could see tiny little things too better than most folks.

Then my arms started to shrink, started with the readers
eventually went to an optometrist to get some progressives with clear on top, just for convenience...but of course he found reason to add just a bit of correction for the distance...
then over several years it got worse and worse. I feel like my eyes just got lazy wearing those prescription glasses.

Anyway, eventually it got so bad that without my progressives on at the beach, I couldn't tell which kids were mine.

So I had Lasik done. Distance has never been as good as it was when I was young, but it's pretty good even now several years later. Tests 20/20

I was well into my rusty pilot period when I was wearing those progressives and never flew with them.
I don't think they would be great for flying though. They were ok for general wear, but it took me a very long time to get used to them and the field of clear vision is very narrow. I found that it was well worth spending for the top of the line progressives so that the very narrow field of view is just a little bit wider. The cheaper ones were horrible!

I bought some of those sunglasses with bifocal lenses from FlyingEyes (no distance correction). The lower part of the lenses have less tinting so they are better for looking at things inside the cockpit. Those coupled with my LASIK are really great for driving and flying
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
In America, this is only for people with lots of disposable income.

Although I will say my 70 and 80 year old family members all have 20/20 because they were all able to get lens replacement to correct cataracts which is covered by insurance. I am jealous of them. I would love to be 20/20 again uncorrected.
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True, but when I think back on it...all the money I spent on prescription progressive lenses and frames over those handfull of years I'm fairly sure THAT would have paid for the LASIK that I ultimately paid for anyway. Wish I'd have cut to the chase and just got the LASIK done sooner!
 
I use progressives and learened early on that the narrow, cool looking lenses, have very narrow focus areas. Because of this I got the large lenses which give greater focus areas and are better for flying.

If you have the small vertical dimension progressives, you might want to try "taller" ones.
 
I've worn glasses since I was 3. I have a few odd things about my vision: I do not have true binocular vision though I have two functioning eyes. My right eye is dominant and is near sighted. My left eye is slightly far sighted. After my PPL (which I did using single focus glasses and looking under the lens for chart reading), I began to have trouble focusing on the radio frequencies (on the radio). I got bifocals-not progressives, my eye DR said he didn't recommend them for pilots. I've fiddled with them until I'm pretty happy with them. I've purposely set up the transition point at the glare shield height. The opticians all look at them funny until I explain because that's higher up the lenses that normal. But I need them for that intermediate distance.

I know several pilots who wear progressives with no problems. I do suspect it takes a while for your brain to adjust to either. But if you don't tilt your head up to look down the runway (meaning you're looking through the distance part of your lenses, I don't see why you'd have a problem.

As a side note, during a flight review, with a CFI in the right seat, and with his full knowledge, I did a few landings without my glasses to see how that went just in case I ever dropped a pair in flight and couldn't reach. In my case, I did fine.

My vision is not terrible, +1.75 in one eye, -1.75 in the other, but still needs correction.
 
When I needed correction early last year (I was at 20/40 each eye), I started with progressive lenses because the distance correction messed up my near vision. I did not particularly care for that solution for a variety of reasons.

I’ve been using multifocal contacts last September. Better, but there are still compromises. Talking with my optometrist, they have offered to give a single rx contact lense with offset glasses as an option to correct for the other. Their suggestion that this is either the best or worst of both worlds and highly dependent on individual use case.
 
Can we exercise our eyes? Like can I do 20 minutes of eyeball push-ups every day. Focus near, Focus far? Do like 10 reps twice a day and get back to 20/20? That should be a thing.
 
yup....got em.

1722614397897.gif
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
In America, this is only for people with lots of disposable income.
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Not sure why you would say that. Pretty sure the $99/eye places are still around, although not sure I would use them. I had it done 20 years ago when I had significantly less disposable income than I have now, and still have 20/20 vision. I don't know what glasses/contacts would have cost me over 20 years, but whatever the amortized cost is, it was worth it. I highly recommend it.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I am wondering if this might be the problem. I told them something doesn't seem right and they said, it can take a couple months to get used to.
Also, I left them in a rental car in South Dakota last month so I am in the market for another pair. :(
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I also had this exact same problem several years ago.

I ended up going back to just a single rx lense at the time--until last year when it got to the point everything was way too blurry up close. Got my current lenses through Costco last year, and I realized how bad the first lenses were that the 'real' lense company had given me. I was instantly able to see with them, no 'waiting to get used to them'.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I would love to be 20/20 again uncorrected.
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Wouldn't we all...

I'll get flack on this, but my best pair of all around glasses are off the wall cheaters from Walmart for everything except small print. I can do computer work and still see the ridge lines out my window 5 miles away clearly.

My best sunglasses are aviator frames, actually Serengeti drivers. I have bifocals with the line. I sat in a plane and worked out the best position on where the line should go. That is where I move my eyes down and see the instruments, and move my eyes up and see outside. The glare shield is the dividing point. And then started calling around until I found an ophthalmologist that could make the lens the way I wanted it. With her being married to a pilot helped.

The first time I got glasses i was told to point my nose at what I wanted to look at. Horse apples. Find someone that knows what they are doing.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I am 47 and my eyes are going bad. I have a pair of prescription glasses for the computer, I have readers for medicine labels and now I need something for distance.
Do most people carry around 3 pair of glasses?

I got progressives which were great when sitting at a desk. but they suck for flying. when I look down at the runway, the bottom part of the lens which is for close up is blurry and generally any situation when moving my head, things get a little warped.

I am looking into bi focals but for the non magnified part, would I get computer distance or long distance?
What is the generally accepted solution for people that have aging eyes, not near or far sighted, just all around sucky vision?
Click to expand...

I have progressives that I use once in a while, usually at night after I've removed my contacts, but I hate them. As others have mentioned, the focus area for any particular distance is quite small, so to read I have to keep moving my head. If I'm reading and watching TV at the same time, it becomes very annoying and causes fatigue and eye irritation.

Most of the time I wear contacts which do a great job of correcting my distance vision. I have readers for the computer, and slightly stronger ones for reading or paperwork. I also have some half-lens readers ("granny glasses") that work very well as I can look over the lenses for distance or down through the lenses to see paperwork up close. These are great when I'm in a meeting where I constantly switch back and forth from looking at a screen to looking at my notes.

For flying, I wear my contacts plus sunglasses that have stick-on reading lenses attached. https://www.amazon.com/Bifocal-Magn...663934449-B08RCGMT12-&hvexpln=73&gad_source=1 These let me see instruments and my kneeboard and checklist when I look down, but still have good distance vision whenever I look up. I'm quite pleased with them.


StraightnLevel said:
I recently swapped from progressive glasses to multi-focal contact lenses. These things are pure black magic - absolutely amazing. Range of focus is fantastic, can easily see distance at about 20/15 (corrected) and focus on the instrument panel and kneeboard without any need for a separate pair of glasses. They are a bit expensive, but worth every penny.
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First I've heard of those. I may give them a try. They sound great.
 
Half Fast said:
…
First I've heard of those. I may give them a try. They sound great.
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I’ve been in them for a year and they’re better for me than progressive lenses were. I worked closely with my optometrist who also has a fairly large number of pilots in her practice.

Where the multifocal contacts shines is peripheral vision. But they aren’t perfect.
 
Lindberg said:
Not sure why you would say that. Pretty sure the $99/eye places are still around, although not sure I would use them. I had it done 20 years ago when I had significantly less disposable income than I have now, and still have 20/20 vision. I don't know what glasses/contacts would have cost me over 20 years, but whatever the amortized cost is, it was worth it. I highly recommend it.
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I got my wife Lasik for our first anniversary, 24 years ago. Back then it was both eyes for $3,500.
I haven't looked into the current price but I understand it still isn't covered by insurance. Not the coverage I have traditionally had.
 
I could not get accustomed to progressives in spite of using the best quality lenses and attempts from two different providers over a year. I ended up with the dreaded trifocals. However, they are great for flying- the bottom lenses have my Ipad on the control wheel in perfect focus, the middle lenses have the entire panel in focus, and my far vision is great through the top lenses. I tried progressives in the airplane but had too much difficulty switching focus between the navigator/radio stack and the primary instruments. Unfortunately it is not a try before you buy situation. I never thought I would be wishing for cataracts so I can get my uncorrected mid/far vision back. LOL
 
Just as a data point, nothing more, I've worn progressives for years. Flown everything from Learjets to gliders and everything in-between. Have both sunglasses and clear. Works for me. And I have no problem getting 2nd class medical.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Can we exercise our eyes? Like can I do 20 minutes of eyeball push-ups every day. Focus near, Focus far? Do like 10 reps twice a day and get back to 20/20? That should be a thing.
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Yes. I asked my optometrist once if wearing glasses all the time wouldn't actually make me more dependent on them. He said yes, absolutely. It won't get you back to 20/20 though. Now I find that if I get up in the morning and work at the computer for a couple of hours, I can't focus on squat for a while until I go out and focus on distant things for a while, preferably without my glasses. That, or take an hour long nap with my eyes closed. Eventually I can see again.

I got glasses in the first grade. By my 20s I was at about a -6.5 correction, with some astigmatism thrown in for good measure. With glass lenses my glasses weighed about half a pound it seemed, and plastic lenses gave a lot of distortion and color separation (this was years ago, I'm sure the plastics have gotten better). The one good thing was, I never needed a magnifier -- I could focus on things an inch or two in front of my face. Just not a foot or two.

In my early 40s I had LASIK done. Great, other than losing my hyper-close focus, so I got a bench magnifier for my workshop. No glasses for a few years, then I had to get readers from Wally World, then had to go to prescription readers, now I'm back wearing glasses full time... but now they're progressives, with a + correction instead of -. And I don't like them. They seem to suck equally at everything. I have a pair of bifocal sunglasses from Zenni -- they're better, but the split is a little lower than it should be, an unfortunate effect of doing your own optician work.

Every pair of eyeballs is different. Having a good optometrist and a good optician, each of whom will actually listen to what you tell them, makes a huge difference. The guy I was seeing for a couple of decades with great results is no longer in network for our vision coverage, so we switched to a different office (same company, different practice that they bought) who is. They suck. I'd have better success at Costco.
 
Zeldman said:
Find someone that knows what they are doing.
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...and who listens to you.

Several years ago when I went through a corporate relocation, I tried three optometrists before I found one who would listen to what I asked for, as opposed to doing what they wanted to do. Now I have a GREAT eye doc who understands my requirements and listens - and he's also a bit of a "nerd" in terms of keeping up with new technologies and options in his industry. He's in another state, so I fly to see him. It's worth the time and hassle.
 
Half Fast said:
First I've heard of those. I may give them a try. They sound great.
Click to expand...
Multi-focal contacts work. I switch back and forth between glasses and contacts every 5-10 years when I get fed up with the compromise of whatever system I'm using at the time. Both of the last times I used contacts I used multi-focals and was pleased with the results. And then I eventually got tired of the daily contact dance and went back to glasses. Right now, I'm experiencing just the right amount of presbyopia that I'm very functional for most daily tasks (not flying) without correction. It is a nice place to be after being fairly reliant on glasses or contacts for the last 30 years.
 
Zeldman said:
I'll get flack on this, but my best pair of all around glasses are off the wall cheaters from Walmart for everything except small print.
Click to expand...


For computer work, I get two pair of the same frames but different strengths from Walmart (M+ Readers are my favorite) and swap one of the lenses to meet the discrepancy. Cheap, and quite effective, plus you have a spare frame for when you sit on the original.

My distance vision finally required correction, so last fall I got bifocals. Tried progressives first, but they just aren't for me.
I measured the distances (inches) for car dash and plane panel, and gave those to the optometrist. They absolutely loved that and said it was very helpful. My optometrist didn't have any sunglass frames I liked so I stopped by Walmart one day, and the opt. dept. manager was such great help, I ended up getting both sunglasses and regular frames there. Incredibly helpful and definitely cheaper than my opt. You can add-on extra pairs at quite a discount within 30 days as well.

Before we ordered, I took both (regular and sunglass) frames to the plane and marked the line right where the top of the glare shield was. That's where the bifocal line starts, and that works great in the plane, and luckily also pretty much everywhere for me.
They told me I could make adjustments (no charge) until satisfied, although I think there is a time limit (120 days?).. can't remember but seems plenty of time.
You can also specify the darkness/shade of the sunglasses you order. At her suggestion, I tried the brown color sunglasses (different than amber), and I really like them. They are better in low light for sure.
We tweaked and got them sorted out quite nicely. Very satisfied.
 
I started with single vision, then moved to lined bi-focals, then lined tri-focals. Eventually I decided to try progessives and only regretted it once. That one time I decided to go cheap and ended up with a field of view that was just too narrow to be comfortable.

Over the years my distance has slowly improved. I’m now 20/20 far, but my near is getting worse. I can pass a driver license test since they only test distance but my FAA test checks near so I will still need the “vision correction required” note on my medical. I have a basic set of sunglasses with stick-on reader lenses for everyday use, but I still use rx sunglasses in the plane. Even though my distance is 20/20 I have just enough astigmatism that I want it corrected when flying.

My eye guy, who’s retired now, was/is a Baron owner. We corrected my near and intermediate vision to optimize vision for my kneeboard and the instrument panel.
 
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