Geordi's vision through the VISOR

[Beyerstein]

in that first season episode with the klingons when they beam on the freighter geordi is transiting the visuals back to the enterprise main view screen through his visor

and he see's in all these blurry colors and a big mess. is that how he really had to see all the time? the dialog seemed to indicate that it was. but they always talked like he could see way better than normal humans but you couldn't really make anything out in that blur of colors. but geordi's learned to make sense of it all?

shouldn't he be able to adjust his visor to see normal?

It also seemed funny that the the enterprise and get clear communication from wherever with their communicators but sending video was so hard.
"signal overload i'm surprised it lasted this long"

 

[Silvercrest]

in that first season episode with the klingons when they beam on the freighter geordi is transiting the visuals back to the enterprise main view screen through his visor

and he see's in all these blurry colors and a big mess. is that how he really had to see all the time? the dialog seemed to indicate that it was. but they always talked like he could see way better than normal humans but you couldn't really make anything out in that blur of colors. but geordi's learned to make sense of it all?

shouldn't he be able to adjust his visor to see normal?

To him, that is normal. He can interpret that blurry mess and he can see better than we can. Why change?

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Since he was born blind, he has no point of reference.

So yeah, that blurry mess is "normal" to him.

 

[Beyerstein]

were there ever any other members of starfleet who wore a VISOR

 

[sbk1234]

I remember hearing one of the producers discussing the VISOR, and explaining that on that episode, it was what the VISOR saw, but not the way Geordi's brain interpreted the information.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ True. The Enterprise computer could have interpreted it way differently than Geordi's brain did.

Or at least, presented it much differently on the viewscreen than in G's head.

 

[RAMA]

He can see "better" because he can see much of the electromagnetic spectrum..he can see more than we do, and its useful for missions, but its not the way he'd prefer to see. Kind of reminds me of the argument for Data's skin color:"why didn't it look normal if it was so advanced?"....answer:"how do you know its not BETTER than normal skin?".

RAMA

 

[MikeS]

You'd think that by the 24th century all away team members would be fitted with a head-cam anyway.

 

[Timo]

They have tricorders. Which do record visuals in "City on the Edge of Forever" at least. They just don't appear to hook those up to the main viewer too often - just like they don't use the main viewer for other seemingly rational purposes such as overlaying tactical information on visuals, or briefing for away team duty the bridge crew (which in any case will be the one performing the duty), or watching inflight movies, or whatnot.

Perhaps it's just an artifact of Starfleet not believing in remotely controlled away missions? Perhaps it's highly unusual for the starship to interfere with what the landing party is doing? Possibly standard procedure calls for the landing party leader to give well-edited verbal reports whenever he or she feels like it, and for the people up in orbit to zip their lips unless the landing party specifically requests some sort of information or assistance.

This makes quite a bit of sense when we remember that the landing party is quite often led by the ship's CO, or at least by the XO. The party is not subordinate to the ship, but vice versa.

shouldn't he be able to adjust his visor to see normal?

That's a bit like a bunch of one-eyed people who only can see black and white coming and telling you and me that we must be suffering terribly when our vision is such a jumbled mess, and why don't we get an operation that will remove one eye, color vision and depth vision, and thus restore normal sight?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Silvercrest]

shouldn't he be able to adjust his visor to see normal?

That's a bit like a bunch of one-eyed people who only can see black and white coming and telling you and me that we must be suffering terribly when our vision is such a jumbled mess, and why don't we get an operation that will remove one eye, color vision and depth vision, and thus restore normal sight?

Exactly! Excellent comparison!

"In the country of the sighted, the VISORed man is king." Or something.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

shouldn't he be able to adjust his visor to see normal?

That's a bit like a bunch of one-eyed people who only can see black and white coming and telling you and me that we must be suffering terribly when our vision is such a jumbled mess, and why don't we get an operation that will remove one eye, color vision and depth vision, and thus restore normal sight?

This. You don't turn your green or red off from time to time to see "normal". Geordi's visor might have been a little overwhelming as it was transmitting much more than three distinct components to the brain, but after all, Geordi's brain had learned how to deal with them, so there was no need for hardware filtering from the visor itself.

I doubt that would be the case for visors in the real world, though. You'd probably want to turn off half of the data going to the brain sometimes. I'm surprised that there wasn't such filtering mentioned in Star Trek.

Also, the image looked quite unrealistic, but maybe that's just me.

Anyway, I believe the point to the distorted image was that the eyes are already sending confusing images to the brain, and the brain has learned how to interpret them so that we can “see”, and that seeing is much more complex for the brain that one would think.

 

[JarodRussell]

I did wonder why he couldn't adjust the VISOR to show him the visible light spectrum only (since he mentioned a couple of times that he couldn't see things like a normal person would, for instance a sunrise). Then he would have been able to see everything just like a normal person, no?

 

[Noname Given]

shouldn't he be able to adjust his visor to see normal?

That's a bit like a bunch of one-eyed people who only can see black and white coming and telling you and me that we must be suffering terribly when our vision is such a jumbled mess, and why don't we get an operation that will remove one eye, color vision and depth vision, and thus restore normal sight?

Exactly! Excellent comparison!

"In the country of the sighted, the VISORed man is king." Or something.

Well, (imo) they had a better 'effect' showing what Geordi saw through his VISOR in the 4th season episode The Manchurian Candi...er, I mean,...The Mind's Eye

 

[Silvercrest]

I did wonder why he couldn't adjust the VISOR to show him the visible light spectrum only (since he mentioned a couple of times that he couldn't see things like a normal person would, for instance a sunrise). Then he would have been able to see everything just like a normal person, no?

That's a pretty good point. The only reason I can think of is psychological. To him, it would still be like watching a sunset over the Enterprise's main viewscreen instead of in person. He'd still know it wasn't "real vision", so why bother? The VISOR might even have HUD displays and readings that he couldn't turn off.

 

[Trekker4747]

It seems sort-of silly the VISOR reads the entire EM spectrum rather than just the visual spectrum of light. I mean if my police-scanner can be handicapped to the point it can scan certain frequencies (like the ones for wireless phones) why can't Geordi's VISOR be made to only scan visible light?

 

[swaaye]

I mean if my police-scanner can be handicapped to the point it can scan certain frequencies (like the ones for wireless phones) why can't Geordi's VISOR be made to only scan visible light?

Sci-fi sillyness? Of course, it's kinda too bad that our eyeballs can't see the full EM spectrum. There are animals that can see more of it than we do.

 

[danellis]

You described your police-scanner as "handicapped."

How does that make the design of the VISOR silly, rather than that of your police-scanner.

The human eye is limited by nature in the frequency range it can receive, your police scanner is artifically limited by law (to protect the privacy of people making phone calls), we can only guess what, or for what reasons, the capabilities of the VISOR are limired.

dJE

 

[SoM]

Since he was born blind, he has no point of reference.

Not exactly - Q-powered Riker gave him normal eyes in "Hide and Q", and he takes a good look around before telling Riker & Q that he doesn't want favours from them.

 

[Trekker4747]

But that was sort of my point. A few times during TNG Geordi longs for real eyes and even discusses various ways it might happen for him through surgical techniques.

Which just, for me, begs the question on why his VISOR couldn't simply be tuned to only recieve the visible light spectrum? My brining up the scanner was a "if we can make device today that only read parts of the EM spectrum, why can;t they do the same for Geordi's VISOR?"

 

[Silvercrest]

But that was sort of my point. A few times during TNG Geordi longs for real eyes and even discusses various ways it might happen for him through surgical techniques.

Which just, for me, begs the question on why his VISOR couldn't simply be tuned to only recieve the visible light spectrum? My brining up the scanner was a "if we can make device today that only read parts of the EM spectrum, why can;t they do the same for Geordi's VISOR?"

I suspect they can. But did you see what I wrote earlier?

The only reason I can think of is psychological. To him, it would still be like watching a sunset over the Enterprise's main viewscreen instead of in person. He'd still know it wasn't "real vision", so why bother? The VISOR might even have HUD displays and readings that he couldn't turn off.