Nemesis: why is Geordi so impressed with "normal" vision?

[dswynne1]

I always thought that it was weird that Geordie had a VISOR to begin with (being a fan of the "Six Million Dollar Man" television show). You would think that scientific and technological development would have enabled him to have ocular implants to begin with. Then again, IRL, we're talking about 1987's perspective on the future, and GR probably wanted something tangible in terms of having character with an obvious non-disability.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I suspect that it's a complicated psychological issue for Geordi, not a simple good/bad. For example, when it was brought up that he could take something for the pain that his VISOR caused, he refused on the basis that it would reduce what he saw.

 

[MarsWeeps]

Maybe his new ocular implants will prevent him from repeating the most embarrassing and unnecessary move in Trek History!

http://geordirollsunderthedoor.ytmnd.com/

 

[Morpheus 02]

What was presented to us during TNG as Geordie-vision never seemed right.

The way it's been described was, that He sees all we see and then some.

So the way I imagine it is, that he sees the entire visual spectrum but in a condensed way. The blue side of the spectrum shifted towards red and the red toward blue to fit in the wider range of ultraviolet, infrared, etc.
Or at least that's how it should have been presented.
A drawback could be that he loses spectrum resolution. Where we can differentiate between a ton of shades of green for example, to Geordie it would just be simply green.
Also "pixel" resolution might be a factor. He had the ability to zoom in at least with the implants, which is awesome, but the picture quality could be like VHS compared to 4K.

That would be to assume the VISOR has inferior visual quality as normal eyesight, which is 1) something Geordi has absolutely no way to know and no basis for comparison and 2) probably not the case, since we know his visor is capble of detecting microfractures and metal fatigue in solid objects and is pretty good at determining the details of those features.

More to the point: if Geordi actually wanted to see what normal people see, it wouldn't be hard to adjust his visor to only show him the visual spectrum within the normal (for a human, anyway) color spectrum. The only reason not to leave his VISOR on that setting all the time is because he would find that way too limiting and likes being able to see such a broad range of detail (who wouldn't?).


And Insurrection is just Insurrection.

Except i don't think he can turn off his vision/focus it exclusively in one spectrum. I mean he can focus on a one thing for a few seconds...but not all the time. It's like being able to hear something through a bunch of background noise...you might for a minute or two...but you can't enjoy a song or a hear a speech that way.

And his vision also cause him constant pain.

 

[Trevacious]

He also had telescopic vision, casually mentioned during Hide & Q.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

What was presented to us during TNG as Geordie-vision never seemed right.

The way it's been described was, that He sees all we see and then some.

So the way I imagine it is, that he sees the entire visual spectrum but in a condensed way. The blue side of the spectrum shifted towards red and the red toward blue to fit in the wider range of ultraviolet, infrared, etc.
Or at least that's how it should have been presented.
A drawback could be that he loses spectrum resolution. Where we can differentiate between a ton of shades of green for example, to Geordie it would just be simply green.
Also "pixel" resolution might be a factor. He had the ability to zoom in at least with the implants, which is awesome, but the picture quality could be like VHS compared to 4K.

That would be to assume the VISOR has inferior visual quality as normal eyesight, which is 1) something Geordi has absolutely no way to know and no basis for comparison and 2) probably not the case, since we know his visor is capble of detecting microfractures and metal fatigue in solid objects and is pretty good at determining the details of those features.

More to the point: if Geordi actually wanted to see what normal people see, it wouldn't be hard to adjust his visor to only show him the visual spectrum within the normal (for a human, anyway) color spectrum. The only reason not to leave his VISOR on that setting all the time is because he would find that way too limiting and likes being able to see such a broad range of detail (who wouldn't?).


And Insurrection is just Insurrection.

Except i don't think he can turn off his vision/focus it exclusively in one spectrum.

HE can't, obviously. But it would be relatively simple to reprogram his VISOR to only give him input in the visual spectrum in order to simulate normal vision. Basically, just narrow the VISOR's frequency range or, failing that, reduce the number of frequencies it actually sends to him. And again, the only real reason to NOT do that is because he would loose quite a bit of perception that way and that's not something he would find all that beneficial.

And his vision also cause him constant pain.

Until he takes it off, of course. That, more than anything, is probably why he switched to ocular implants after Generations. And the above consideration is also why he didn't arrange to have a set of eyes that give him a perfectly humanlike frequency response range: he didn't WANT normal vision, he wanted the full-monty broad spectrum Terminator View.

 

[Mytran]

Like many good sci-fi technology tropes, Geordi's VISOR is an "all or nothing" piece of kit. Similar to Steve Austin's arm and legs, it seems the only way to replace a missing human ability is with a superhuman ability! LaForge once described his VISOR as "seeing the entire electromagnetic spectrum at once" which may just be the natural state of whatever exotic material the VISOR is made from - selectively tuning it down may simply not be an option, not in a way which keeps the unit light and portable.