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.

翻译：开发与评估视觉科学方法需要稳健高效的工具体系，以验证其在各类真实场景中的表现。本研究提出一种新型虚拟现实（VR）仿真工具，该工具在模拟真实光学方法的同时赋予实验高度的可控性。该工具集成了实验控制器（可流畅且便捷地处理多种实验条件）、通用眼动追踪控制器（兼容主流VR眼动追踪器）、可配置散光模拟器，以及通用VR问卷加载系统（用于评估受试者在虚拟现实中的行为表现）。这一基于VR的仿真工具弥合了光学新方法、矫正方案及治疗手段从理论探索到应用研究之间的鸿沟，为视觉科学家提供兼具鲁棒性、真实性与高效性的研究平台，从而扩展其研究工具箱。