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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alexis Powell" data-source="post: 3584702" data-attributes="member: 5327">I don't find the natural world to look flat either. Nor do I find the view through flat field binoculars to be flat. For me, the best flat field designs present a view to my eyes that is well corrected for focus and astigmatism from center to edge. Consequently, when I dart my eyes around in a flat field binocular, I can look on and off axis and have a clear and sharp view, just like when I dart my eyes around when not looking through binoculars. Again, the view doesn't look somehow flat to me, it appears natural but magnified. Other than the difference between stereo and single-eyed vision, and the effect of viewing distance on stereo vision, I don't even understand how a given view can look more flat or dimensional. Maybe that's why I get absolutely no benefit of heightened "realism" from 3-D movies. The view through a binocular (any binocular) does look different than with the naked eye in the sense that distances appear compressed due to the fact that perspective based on the true FOV is not the same as what would obtain with the naked eye equivalent of the apparent FOV, but that is an effect that I am well accustomed to from doing photography using long lenses. In use, I generally don't notice other distortions (pincushion, barrel, differences in magnification center to edge) imposed by binoculars, presumably because my brain adjusts so quickly they don't trigger awareness.When looking through a binocular without a flat field, darting my eyes off axis yields an unsharp view (esp. if off axis is astigmatic and thus can't be fixed with my eye's ability to correct focus), which I find very unnatural and irritating. Keeping my eyes trained down the center axis of a bin is very also irritating and unnatural for me. Obviously, for some (perhaps even most) people, keeping the eyes relatively fixed straight ahead is not as bothersome as it is for me. As evidence of that, note how popular small eyeglasses lenses (which enforce a rather rigid eye position) have become over the past couple decades in the USA. I can't stand such glasses and prefer an aviator type design that is large enough and that fits close enough for me to move my eyes freely and obtain a sharp view almost to the limits of their range of motion.--AP</blockquote>

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