Question Glowing eyes

Any Ideas how glowing eyes as mentioned by Imp that that magic user had in Mission Imp-ossible might do to someone's vision?

Well... if it was a magic user, then maybe their eyes were not actually glowing, it was just an illusion.

it depends on whether you're going for comedy or drama

Sir Lee wrote: Well... if it was a magic user, then maybe their eyes were not actually glowing, it was just an illusion.

Hadn't thought of the illusion thing.

As for what I'm going for tone wise... not quite sure yet, still getting a feel for the character. Does kind of feel like she might need something to trip her up. I had been thinking slightly glowing eyes would be different and a gauge for others to figure out how much energy she has stored up.

In general it wont help vision at all, Kristin is quite correct.
One possibility though is that the person has a shifted visual spectrum, and the glow, while visible, it outside this and so has less effect on them seeing.

Like this blind superhero,

http://superredundant.com/?comic=strip-6

For example, http://superredundant.com/?comic=039-we-need-duct-tape

It's worth noting that how the eyes glow affects whether it's an issue. If a bunch of cells are just glowing omnidirectionally with no other changes, then yeah, it's going to be like holding a light bulb in front of your face. Even if it's only the outsides of your iris or the white of your eye, those are actually translucent and will leak some of that light. If the structures that are glowing are on the outside of your eyes and are either producing light in a directional way or are backed by opaque or reflective material to prevent leakage into the eye, then it would be fine (though it would still hamper vision during foggy conditions). This wouldn't achieve glowing pupils, assuming you even care about those, but if it's a bright enough effect they might be swallowed up in the glare.

If you opt for the reflective approach Kristin mentioned as a way of faking glowing pupils, note that it isn't quite consequence-free. The idea behind it is that since some of the light that goes into your eyes misses the detector cells and slams uselessly into the back of your eye, you add a reflective layer behind the retina to bounce those photons back through it in hopes that you'll catch a few more of them the second time around. This increases the amount of light you pick up (i.e. better night vision), but the extra light ends up out of focus, making your vision slightly blurrier.

A different take on the glowing-eyes trope would be to only have one eye that glows -- rather than functioning as an eye, it becomes a built-in turret-mounted flashlight that automatically tracks the other eye's aim so that you always have good illumination. In this case, the downsides would be reduced field of vision, reduced depth perception, and all the other little issues that come from only having one eye (e.g. night-vision and blinking become all-or-nothing, possible aches from your body trying to force the bad eye to work, etc.). On top of that, you'd have to remember to close your flashlight eye whenever looking someone in the face unless the power has an off-switch, and it would give away your position at night unless you actually cover the eye (eyelids are thin, so merely closing it would reduce the intensity and diffuse the beam, but it would still be glowing through the skin and softly illuminating the area around you). Another issue is that having a flashlight almost perfectly in line with your vision eliminates most shadows. Shading is a big part of what gives a scene depth, so this would hurt your already hampered depth perception. (You can play with this IRL by holding a flashlight next to your head, then moving it farther away and observing how much more the scene pops once you can see the shadows.)

On the topic of depth perception, it's good to remember that it involves a lot more than just binocular vision. Aside from shading, there's also focal distance (stuff that's closer or farther than what you're focused on is blurry, and you can feel the amount of strain change as you focus on closer or further objects), parallax (shifting your head from side to side and comparing how the various objects in the scene move relative to one another), sizes (if you know how big something actually is, you can tell how far away it is based on how big or small it appears to be), and position within a scene (if there's only a little ground/wall/ceiling between you and the object, it's close; if there's a lot of ground, it's far). If you go a while with one eye, you learn to pay more attention to these other cues and get better at interpreting them. So initially after manifestation you'd be kind of clumsy, but within a couple weeks you'd be doing a lot better.

Kristin Darken wrote: glowing eyes is generally not going to be a 'good' thing. light sources that close to the eyes are really going to disrupt actual vision. remember that what we 'normally' call glowing eyes in animals is nothing of the sort... its a higher level of reflection/refraction from those eyes of an outside light source. Cat's for example, aren't generating light from their eyes... you're seeing light from another source reflect off a cat's eyes when they are irised open and engaged in seeing more clearly in dim lighting.

I knew about the cat eye reflective bit, and was going to add that to my avatar with the mirror spirit as it's something that seemed to fit the them and was something that a shifter would't likely think to change..

Kettlekorn wrote: It's worth noting that how the eyes glow affects whether it's an issue. If a bunch of cells are just glowing omnidirectionally with no other changes, then yeah, it's going to be like holding a light bulb in front of your face. Even if it's only the outsides of your iris or the white of your eye, those are actually translucent and will leak some of that light. If the structures that are glowing are on the outside of your eyes and are either producing light in a directional way or are backed by opaque or reflective material to prevent leakage into the eye, then it would be fine (though it would still hamper vision during foggy conditions). This wouldn't achieve glowing pupils, assuming you even care about those, but if it's a bright enough effect they might be swallowed up in the glare.

If you opt for the reflective approach Kristin mentioned as a way of faking glowing pupils, note that it isn't quite consequence-free. The idea behind it is that since some of the light that goes into your eyes misses the detector cells and slams uselessly into the back of your eye, you add a reflective layer behind the retina to bounce those photons back through it in hopes that you'll catch a few more of them the second time around. This increases the amount of light you pick up (i.e. better night vision), but the extra light ends up out of focus, making your vision slightly blurrier.

A different take on the glowing-eyes trope would be to only have one eye that glows -- rather than functioning as an eye, it becomes a built-in turret-mounted flashlight that automatically tracks the other eye's aim so that you always have good illumination. In this case, the downsides would be reduced field of vision, reduced depth perception, and all the other little issues that come from only having one eye (e.g. night-vision and blinking become all-or-nothing, possible aches from your body trying to force the bad eye to work, etc.). On top of that, you'd have to remember to close your flashlight eye whenever looking someone in the face unless the power has an off-switch, and it would give away your position at night unless you actually cover the eye (eyelids are thin, so merely closing it would reduce the intensity and diffuse the beam, but it would still be glowing through the skin and softly illuminating the area around you). Another issue is that having a flashlight almost perfectly in line with your vision eliminates most shadows. Shading is a big part of what gives a scene depth, so this would hurt your already hampered depth perception. (You can play with this IRL by holding a flashlight next to your head, then moving it farther away and observing how much more the scene pops once you can see the shadows.)

On the topic of depth perception, it's good to remember that it involves a lot more than just binocular vision. Aside from shading, there's also focal distance (stuff that's closer or farther than what you're focused on is blurry, and you can feel the amount of strain change as you focus on closer or further objects), parallax (shifting your head from side to side and comparing how the various objects in the scene move relative to one another), sizes (if you know how big something actually is, you can tell how far away it is based on how big or small it appears to be), and position within a scene (if there's only a little ground/wall/ceiling between you and the object, it's close; if there's a lot of ground, it's far). If you go a while with one eye, you learn to pay more attention to these other cues and get better at interpreting them. So initially after manifestation you'd be kind of clumsy, but within a couple weeks you'd be doing a lot better.

And don't forget to add in the saccading effects of eyeball movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade

Also look at this:



Do you see the movement?

That's saccading effects.

And the one character from Whately that I remember having light emitting eyes was indeed functionally blind.
At least to electronics (computer screens)

I think there have been a few with glowing eyes, but the only one I remember off the top of my head is Kayda.

Buffalo Gal Won't You Come Out Tonight (Ch 1) wrote: Upon closer and more deliberate examination, it seemed that there was a very slight glow radiating from my eyes. Experimentally, I flipped off the light and was confronted by eyes that had the soft, warm green glow that reminded me of an electroluminescent nightlight.

In her case they don't seem to hamper her at all, but they're weak and were probably intentionally designed by Wakan Tanka or Ptesanwi to be nuisance-free. It's not like it's hard to just make a light spell that creates the light in front of the eyes and directs it outwards; no illusion required.

Generally speaking, I don't see any reason to consider glowing eyes a problem. There are ways they can go wrong, but there are also plenty of ways to avoid those problems. You can have them be as annoying or trouble-free as you want.