A major outstanding challenge in the field of bionic vision is predicting what people “see” when they use their devices. The limited field of view of current devices necessitates head movements to scan the scene, which is difficult to simulate on a computer screen. In addition, many computational models of bionic vision lack biological realism.

To address these challenges, we present BionicVisionXR, an open-source virtual reality toolbox for simulated prosthetic vision that uses a psychophysically validated computational model to allow sighted participants to “see through the eyes” of a bionic eye user.