VisionaryVR: An Optical Simulation Tool for Evaluating and Optimizing Vision Correction Solutions in Virtual Reality

Developing and evaluating vision science methods require robust and efficient tools for assessing their performance in various real-world scenarios. This study presents a novel virtual reality (VR) simulation tool that simulates real-world optical methods while giving high experimental control to the experiment. The tool incorporates an experiment controller, to smoothly and easily handle multiple conditions, a generic eye-tracking controller, that works with most common VR eye-trackers, a configurable defocus simulator, and a generic VR questionnaire loader to assess participants' behavior in virtual reality. This VR-based simulation tool bridges the gap between theoretical and applied research on new optical methods, corrections, and therapies. It enables vision scientists to increase their research tools with a robust, realistic, and fast research environment.