Rather than aiming to one day restore natural vision, we might be better off thinking about how to create practical and useful artificial vision now.

Embedding simulated prosthetic vision models in immersive virtual reality allows sighted subjects to act as virtual patients by “seeing” through the eyes of the patient.

How do people’s navigatioal abilities change in stressful conditions? How can we best train them for these situations? And how can vision augmentation be employed to improve situational awareness?

BionicVisionXR is 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 recipient.

We used immersive virtual reality to develop a novel behavioral paradigm to examine navigation under dynamically changing, high-stress situations.