Shooting Games Sharpen Vision?

BY Andrew Miesner / April 1, 2009

Written by Jordan “analyze” Schultz

A new study has shown that fast paced shooters actually help sharpen vision. Most people would say gaming ruins your vision, but they are completely wrong, it does just the opposite.

But just what part of your vision do these games actually help sharpen? Doctors say fast paced video games improve your “contrast sensitivity.” Contrast sensitivity helps you notice slight changes in color. This helps you with everyday activities such as night driving. Contrast sensitivity is said to degrade slowly with age.

Two sets of experiments and tests were conveyed to try to prove this theory true. In the first, they compared the contrast sensitivity between a hardcore FPS gamer, and a standard video game player. The result was the hardcore FPS gamers contrast sensitivity was 50% more efficient than the standard video gamer.

There was another question that had to be asked, and that was, “Had their vision been improved by gaming, or was it originally better from the start?” This called for another experiment. For the second and final experiment, they asked two groups of non-video game players to participate. They went through 50 hours of video game playing. Group 1 played a very common FPS game, Call of Duty. The second group played a visually rich game, which lacked action.

Researchers said, “Group one improved by 43%, but group 2 did not improve at all.” “The positive effect that was given to group 1 from the games lasted for months afterwards, which indicates a long lasting effect.”

So it is true, shooters really do improve your vision. Next time your mom tells you to get off the computer because it has no benefit, tell her that you are improving your visionTongue out.

Source: News.com.au