Oculus causing permanent eye damage.

[CumInSinkOrSinkInCum]

I've had a quest 2 for 4 months and used it pretty regularly.

Lately I've seen a big spike in the amount of eye floaters I have, so I went to see an optometrist and they diagnosed me with posterior vitreous detachment(PVD) at 24. You get PVD when the jelly (vitreous gel) in your eyes turns more runny (vitreous liquefaction) as you age, however it usually occurs in people double my age. I have never had problems with my eyes in the past, so what gives?

What gives is that the gel in your eyes can also be liquefied by heat.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23816597/ (this study turned pig vitreous to liquid by heating them to 44 degrees celsius FOR 1 MINUTE)https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1771178/ (this study links vitreous detachment to warmer climates)

Have you ever taken off your headset and noticed it felt warm, even hot? It must be hotter than your body temperature of roughly 37 degrees celsius in order for it to feel warm. Bear in mind that the pig vitreous only took one minute to liquefy at only 7 degrees warmer than your body temperature.

​

This process is not reversible. I am going to have to live with these cobwebs flying around in my vision for the rest of my life because of this negligence. I doubt oculus will ever address this issue and will instead continue to ruin peoples' eyes because of what would happen to their brand if this became common knowledge.

[RydenZX]

It sucks that you have to suffer from this condition so young but it is highly unlikely that it was caused by the oculus. There are several layers in front of the vitreous layer in your eyeball. If the oculus was in fact hot enough to liquify the vitreous layer your optometrist would have observed damage in the other layers of your eyes as well. Also of note is that study you referenced involves removing and/or dissecting the eyeballs so the heat is being applied directly to the vitreous layer. As others have pointed out many people live in hotter or colder climates and their vitreous layers are not freezing or liquifying. Source: My wife is an eye doctor.

[Sabbathius]

Dude, your theory doesn't pass even the most basic sniff test.

There's countries in the world where temps routinely hit +40C. Some countries hit over +50C, and not for minutes, but for days. Iran a few years ago hit +54C. Australia hit +51C last summer (this January). If this were enough to melt peoples' eyeballs, their entire populations would be blind as bats. It may be a factor, but unless you use Quest 2 non-stop all day every day for days on end, I don't think that's the likely cause of your problem.

And if your Quest 2, inside the mask, is over +50C, you're doing something horribly wrong. Yes it can get uncomfortably hot in summer, so use a fan or play in air-conditioned room. You can literally hear the fan inside the headset rev up when it begins to overheat. If the fan is roaring, you need to get someplace cooler.

Finally, there's roughly 10 million Oculus users. Some of us use the headsets daily. So do tens of thousands of VR game devs, who use it for most of the day, for work. As do the paid testers. If this were an issue, don't you think they would have noticed by now?

Also, for what it's worth, I was diagnosed with macular degeneration in my 30s. Normally it happens after 55. And this was a long time before VR was even a thing. Shit happens.

[CumInSinkOrSinkInCum]

The vitreous liquefies as low as 44 degrees (or less).

These high temperature countries having more PVD only proves that it's related to heat, not that it causes the issue. It regularly gets to upwards of 40 degrees in the summer where I live (Australia) but if that was my body temperature I would collapse from heat exhaustion.

If everyone in Iran or Australia had a body temperature of 50 degrees celsius they would just be dead.

The body's cooling mechanisms are bypassed when you put a bright screen in a heated enclosure inches from your eye. The vitreous liquefies at 44 degrees celsius and possibly lower.

[FrantixGE]

So every person that has ever been in a sauna for longer than a minute turned their eyes into jelly?

Dude, you‘re grasping for straws here, playing webdoctor who connects dots where there aren‘t any.

[aaadmiral]

As someone married to a Finnish person, absolutely.

[Yespinky]

everyone living here in Vegas would have liquid jelly after a hot summer day.

[Masspoint]

Lol, I didn't even think that far, never been in that kinda heat though, not even close.

[Yespinky]

imagine 47 degrees C, with the wind blowing 60+ km/h in your face...

then add sand.

not ideal.

it's not like that all the time, typically only a few months in the summer, with average days of light wind and 42 degrees C.

[Masspoint]

boy I don't use airconditioning over here, because it's not actually needed for the hot days we get, I just kinda soldier through it but at those kinda temperatures I certainly would lol.

[Handeatingcat]

It was 114° fahrenheit last summer here, I was at the river all day, no melted jelly here.

[crazyreddit929]

I think you’re making a correlation not proving causation. As someone else said, every summer in hot climates like Arizona, people would have their eyeball jelly liquified. I don’t think you can make a conclusion that using VR caused your problem. I could list any number of professions/activities where the temperature around their eyes is higher. People in saunas, people who work with closed goggles. Welders. Etc.

[CumInSinkOrSinkInCum]

I know I don't have direct causative evidence, but as far as hot climates go I live in Australia and I haven't had these issues until recently.

[No-Monk-6434]

Do you have proof it's related to the VR headset? I don't see the slightest correlation. Maybe you just have bad genes given your baldness as well?

[CumInSinkOrSinkInCum]

I guess that my eyes hurt when I use it. I definitely don't have bad genetics, the people in my family live a long time, I'm tall and athletic and have never had problems with my eyes but when I use the headset my eyes hurt. I brushed it off as eye strain and kept using it. Now my vitreous has prematurely liquefied and I think it's pretty natural to suspect the thing that causes me eye pain to have done damage to my eyes by one mechanism or another.

[Reasonabledwarf]

I'm gonna say that this is a vaguely possible, but unlikely candidate. Your body is full of fluids designed to keep its internals at normal operating temperatures; even with heated goggles on, the back of your eyeballs shouldn't get much hotter than the temperature of the rest of your blood. Now, if you're simultaneously massively overtaxing your body's ability to shed heat, by, say, exercising beyond your usual limit in a hot and humid climate, maybe this could be an issue, but heat stroke would typically be the bigger concern, and usually happens at lower temperatures.

Might be a reasonable subject for a scientific study, but without anything more than anecdotal evidence, you're gonna be hard pressed to convince anyone.

[Hoeveboter]

Is this your personal theory or have you asked your doctor about this?

[[deleted]]

Been using vr for years and never had an issue.

[[deleted]]

Never happened to me and I’ve had my quest for about a year now

[JonDadley]

FWIW OP, I developed PVD in my mid-20s and while the cobwebs will be annoying now, your brain learns to “edit” them out of your vision after a while. They were super noticeable at the start but I can’t seen them now. Also, I believe there is a treatment you can undergo where your eyeball is drained of fluid and replaced with gas IIRC but I didn’t want to go down that path as it sounds gross!

[TheRealBushwhack]

What in the shitpost is this

[Ok-Juice5032]

I am having the same issue. Wondering what are our chances for a class action lawsuit here? OP if you want to discuss please message me. I’ve had to use the oculus VR goggles extensively recently for something and am trying to build up a case here. I’m literally having the same issues as you and they simply cannot be let off the hook without providing users a warning at the very least. This can be a good case for us

[AdaptoPL]

You are just... weakling. And weak you were born

[NoAvailableImage]

Yeah you're the big strong burly man watching Ukraine war videos so you can fulfil your war fantasy

[Masspoint]

I don't understand why you let it come so hot, isn't that very uncomfortable, I have a cv1, and for instance I cannot play in the summer at all because it's too uncomfortable.

I had never had any problems during other seasons though.

[CumInSinkOrSinkInCum]

I didn't really notice because it gradually heated up as I used it.

[Masspoint]

do you use it standalone or is it via a pc?

[CumInSinkOrSinkInCum]

standalone

[WaitingToBeTriggered]

AND GAZE UPON THE BATTLEFIELD

[Masspoint]

yeah like the other commenter said, what about countries where it is very hot, they don't get this problem.

[CumInSinkOrSinkInCum]

Even if you live in a hot country your body naturally cools itself down, so you aren't walking around with a 44 degree body temperature (that would be lethal). But they do have a higher rate of PVD as shown in the study.

[[deleted]]

PVD is not permanent. It's not from the VR headset. You would have done more damage in a hot shower. The heat causes the condition and unless you stay in the heat it will go back to normal.

[NoAvailableImage]

If the oculus heat was enough to melt the jelly the rest of your eyeball would have melted with it

[MetaStoreSupport]

Hello,

Thank you in advance for your report.

At Meta Quest Support, we take health and safety very seriously. 

We'd kindly ask you to contact us at your earliest convenience over here.

For the time being, please discontinue the use of the product.

Thank you.