VISION-AI

Assistive Vision Glasses Sim

15,000 Ray-Ban Meta × Vision Ireland Initiative
SCENARIO:
VISION PROFILE:
🔊 Spatial Audio Beacons
📡 Obstacle Radar (Haptic/Chirp)
🎙️ Multimodal Scene Narration
🔍 Live Sign/Text OCR
HEAD GAZE: 0° | RAY-BAN META AI ACTIVE
GOAL DIST: 42.0m
Interactive Controls: Use Arrow Keys / WASD or Drag on Canvas / Click & Move to steer the visitor. Look towards beacons to hear directional spatial pulses and AI obstacle callouts.

Walking blind spots: how the glasses sim guides you through a station

A one-minute painted explainer of how this simulator models low vision and turns beacons, radar chirps and safety scores into guidance, followed by the real conditions and aids behind it.

Read the narration

For someone with low vision, a busy station is a maze of stairs, trolleys and gates. This simulator walks you through a Dublin transit hub with four vision profiles and AI glasses that talk you through it. The default is central scotoma, the blind spot of macular degeneration. The tool blacks out about six metres around you, so the edges stay visible but what's straight ahead is gone. The target is the Platform 2 train door, forty-eight metres away. A beacon tone pulses every one point four seconds, rising in pitch as you get closer. Obstacle radar chirps at anything within six metres. Following the yellow tactile paving, it picks up three of the four hazards; the support column stays out of range. Bump into something and the safety score drops eighteen points per collision. One knock still reads safe, at eighty-two percent. Two drops you to a warning. Real aids work the same way, adding sound and touch to whatever sight remains. Try tunnel vision, then switch the radar off, and see how much harder the walk gets.

What the simulator models, and the real conditions behind it

Four ways sight can fail

The tool's masks are simplified: central scotoma darkens a disc about 6 m around you (macular degeneration), tunnel vision leaves only a 5 m circle clear (glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa), low acuity lays a 55% white haze over everything (cataract), and total occlusion blacks out the view.

The tool's guidance rules

At 15 pixels per metre, the goal starts 48 m away. The beacon pulses every 1.4 s, rising from about 480 Hz toward 880 Hz as you approach; radar chirps every 0.6 s for anything within 6 m, with a higher note inside about 1.8 m; the sign reader speaks signs within roughly 9–10 m.

Macular degeneration hits the centre

The U.S. National Eye Institute describes age-related macular degeneration as blurring the sharp central vision needed for reading and recognising faces, while glaucoma typically steals peripheral vision first, often unnoticed until late.

Low vision is common

The World Health Organization estimates that at least 2.2 billion people worldwide have a near or distance vision impairment, and that in at least 1 billion of them it could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed.

Tactile paving is a real language

UK Department for Transport guidance defines distinct tactile surfaces: blister paving at crossings, corduroy at the top and bottom of steps, and a guidance path along routes, like the yellow strip in the simulator.

Try it in the tool

  1. With Central Scotoma selected, steer along the yellow tactile paving with the arrow keys and watch Obstacles Avoided reach 3 / 4 by the Platform 2 Train Door.
  2. Click Tunnel Vision, press Reset, and repeat the walk with only a small clear circle around you.
  3. Toggle Obstacle Radar (Haptic/Chirp) off, press Reset and walk again: hazards are no longer counted, and you will hear no chirps.
  4. Click Enable Spatial Audio first to hear the beacon pitch rise as the goal distance in the HUD falls.

Sources and further reading

  1. Blindness and vision impairment (fact sheet) · World Health Organization

    Global prevalence and leading causes of vision impairment.

  2. Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) · National Eye Institute (NIH)

    How AMD affects central vision.

  3. Glaucoma · National Eye Institute (NIH)

    Peripheral vision loss, the basis of the tunnel-vision profile.

  4. Cataracts · National Eye Institute (NIH)

    Clouding of the lens, the basis of the low-acuity blur profile.

The vision masks, distances and scores in the video are the simulator's simplified model, not a clinical simulation of any condition or a description of any real smart-glasses product.

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