Holger,
Ed's comment earlier about someone questioning the correlation of bench tests to field observations, that would be me, about a hundred times on these forums. No disrespect meant to Henry, and I have always said that bench tests have an important role to play, but also that they don't always match my field experience or tell me all that I need to know in making a purchase decision unless there is something glaringly wrong with the binoculars, and then it might be due to sample variation.
Testing one sample is hard to make generalizations about all samples. Henry knows this and has, for example, pointed out the differences in resolution between the two sides of his 8x56 FL, and also that some imperfections seen "under the microscope" don't affect performance in the field. But exactly where to draw the line between bench testing and field testing, and how much overlaps and how much doesn't, is something I've often wondered about. Your model that attempts to bridge that gap by including the user in the equation sounds promising and could finally settle the debate. Or at least shed some light on it.
There is one more variable that needs to be factored in, and that might require yet another expert, a neuroscientist, because that factor is the brain. When one adjusts to various distortions, for example, such as "rolling ball" caused by AMD, it's not just the eyes' distortion level that's involved, but that matters as you've pointed out in your reports, but also the user's brain. Something happens in people's brains that allows them to make adjustments to accommodate out of the ordinary experiences.
I always mention the old chicken experiment where chickens were fitted with prisms whereby they saw the world upside down and eventually they adjusted to an upside down world. We are like those chickens when we are able to accommodate AMD, excessive pincushion, CA, etc. in binoculars and use them as if they were "picture perfect." Of course, not everybody can accommodate to those distortions/aberrations, for those people, the world still looks "upside down" through the binoculars.
The question is how do you incorporate a user's ability or lack of ability to accommodate these various optical distortions and aberrations into your model?
Some of this falls under the purview of the visual scientist, and I would suggest Ed as a peer reviewer. He modestly downplays his knowledge of binoculars, but he's well versed in optics and he's a visual expert. Sounds like he might be the right person for the job of reviewer.
Brock
