Hi everyone i’m new here .I wanted to ask people here who spend a lot of time in VR or working on computers. Do long sessions in headsets or in front of screens affect your eyesight over time in your experience?Also, do any of you use special glasses for working at the computer or in VR, like blue light or prescription lenses made for screens? I’m asking partly because I work in the wellness field and I’m trying to understand what actually helps people who spend many hours in tech environments.Sorry moderator if I posted somewhere in the wrong place or violated the community rule.
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I used the blue light filter prescription lenses, and I have not see any significant change in eye sight in the past 3 years of using VR, and 0 change in eye sight for the past year.
I also chatted with eye doctor, they said there aren’t much long term research done yet but the finding so far VR did not cause any significant problems to people if blue light is accounted for
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Same here,
I do have subscription lenses and always get them with the blue light filter.
No problems at all. You can have eye strain though when not having dialled in correctly the IPD and in case of using eye tracking and quad views making sure you calibrated the eye tracking correctly.
Once you got these two correctly setup, no issues short nor long term for me.
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For most people, long sessions in VR or at the computer only cause temporary eye strain and dryness, rather than permanent deterioration of vision; some help glasses for screens or with a blue light filter, but breaks and normal distance to the screen are usually more important.
If it helps, I am someone who uses VR for both work and entertainment purposes, has sensitive eyes, and also has a retired UK FRCS eye surgeon for a father - so I have had a lot of good advice over the years!
- I have used computers since I was young and have worked in various technical roles, so computer use has been lifelong. I am shortsighted, although I can’t 100% attribute that to screen use, as I used to read a lot of books when I was younger too. I am in my late 40s but overall have good eyes and don’t require reading glasses / bifocals etc, as many people do at my age.
- I do always follow the advice to take regular breaks, and to regularly refocus my eyes to keep both sets of muscles exercised. Imo, screens might actually be worse than VR for this, because screens fix your view at a specific distance, while VR allows you to focus at different distances depending on the scene.
- That said, it’s very important that VR is correctly set up for the user for full clarity, as otherwise it can cause eye strain or even headaches - just as an incorrect prescription on glasses can do. I believe most strain is however temporary, and it is very rare that someone does themselves any lasting injury from misconfigured VR.
- In theory there is no reason why correctly configured VR should cause any issues, although the same rules apply as to screen use. Users must consciously blink more frequently, as the refresh rate of displays discourages us from doing so. Glare and other factors also cause our eyes to become additionally dry and tired, so regular breaks are a must.
- Personally with sensitive eyes, I can only typically manage 1-1.5 hours of VR at most on a comfortable setup. But then again I would also not wish to use my monitor for more than 2 hours without a break either. I have never been able to wear contact lenses, no matter how thin, for more than a few hours at a time - and when I did, I could not comfortably use computer screens or sit under florescent lights, as typical on trains and offices.
- I have my computer turn on a blue light filter for my monitor after 9pm daily. I don’t currently have coated VR lenses, or set any options for my headset.
- I use glasses for all my headsets so far without any issue - four headsets over time at home, and about six at work. The only ones for which I have not done so are small form factor headsets, so the issue is physical size, despite having one pair of very compact thin-framed glasses - which lucky for me are perfect for VR. I’ll be receiving a Dream Air soon and due to the form factor, I’m looking at prescription lens inserts for the first time.
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The only side effect I can tell is that after a long session, I might have dry eyes. It’s interesting that many people talk about blue filters when all the information I’ve found says there is no real evidence that they make a difference… but I suppose when it comes to vision, there is never enough precaution. In any case, it seems the main purpose of blue light filters is related to how blue light affects your sleep cycles, not eye strain.
In my case, my working glasses (I’m on the computer all day) have a blue filter “just in case,” but the prescription ones in my Pimax don’t have it, since I wanted better color fidelity and I don’t wear the device all day.
Many people who spend long hours in VR or at screens notice eye strain and fatigue, especially without breaks. Following the 20‑20‑20 rule (every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds) helps. Some use blue‑light or screen-specific glasses, which can reduce glare, though results vary. A good approach combines regular breaks, ergonomic setups, and visual hygiene. You can also adjust screen brightness and contrast to match your environment, which can further ease eye strain. More on creating wellness habits at work here: How to Start a Corporate Wellness Program That Actually Works - BetterMe.
Considering we are talking about how displays, and eventually their application in VR, affect the eyes, there are several attributes which affect fatigue or even stress which are common:
- Refresh rate of the display (and refresh rate of the scene in VR)
- PWM driven brightness
- Spectrum of the light
These factors may differ from manufacturer to manufacturer and from technology to technology, so there is no universal answer. Depending how much each of the attributes prevails and how much the eyes are sensitive to it, one may go from “totally fine” to “unusable”.
But while these factors may make the session more or less comfortable or even stress the user, it does not that much change the optical property of eyes.
There is however another factor, which applies only to VR headsets and that is that while using the headset the eyes are focused on constant distance. Technically it may not be constant over the whole FOV, but it is constant in sense that while the user believes he may be looking at something 1 m away, or 500 m away (e.g when playing a flight sim), the eyes are in both cases focused optically at the same distance and the focal distance may (depending how the lenses are designed) only change with the gaze direction.
The focal distance itself is defined by the manufacturer and may differ significantly between brands or even models. This may even lead to strange situations (mostly for older people) where, if the focal distance is borderline to the user’s reading limit, the user may get confused why he cannot focus on the VR scene when all the objects are clearly so far away..
This is the major difference between a VR headset and a monitor. When working with a monitor, one can still look (and more importantly focus) away at different distance and thus “stretch the eyes”, while this is not possible in VR and is probably a significant contributor to the overall fatigue.
So the regular breaks and “eye stretchings” as already recommended are much more important.
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