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What is "binocular vision"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
binocular vision
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Although it occurs among mammals and birds, few other fish possess binocular vision.
▪ Ben possessed the kind of binocular vision I needed so badly.
▪ But their range of binocular vision is only about 30°.
▪ Ducks, too, have 360° vision, with eyes on the sides of their heads, but with limited binocular vision.
▪ For example owls and other predatory birds such as buzzards have binocular vision and acute hearing although they have a poor sense of smell.
▪ It has binocular vision for locating its prey and now rests motionless, waiting for the potential victim to come closer.
▪ The fish possesses a further adaptation to enhance its accuracy: binocular vision.
Wiktionary
binocular vision

n. (context physiology English) A vision system in which two eyes work together to produce a unify field of view which is wider and stereoscopic, and in which objects can be more readily discerned.

WordNet
binocular vision

n. vision involving the use of both eyes

Wikipedia
Binocular vision

Binocular vision is vision in which creatures having two eyes use them together. The word binocular comes from two Latin roots, bini for double, and oculus for eye. According to Fahle (1987), having two eyes confers six advantages over having one.

  1. It gives a creature a spare eye in case one is damaged.
  2. It gives a wider field of view. For example, humans have a maximum horizontal field of view of approximately 190 degrees with two eyes, approximately 120 degrees of which makes up the binocular field of view (seen by both eyes) flanked by two uniocular fields (seen by only one eye) of approximately 40 degrees.

Henson, D.B. (1993). Visual Fields. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  1. It can give stereopsis in which binocular disparity (or parallax) provided by the two eyes' different positions on the head gives precise depth perception. This also allows a creature to break the camouflage of another creature.
  2. It allows the angles of the eyes' lines of sight, relative to each other ( vergence), and those lines relative to a particular object ( gaze angle) to be determined from the images in the two eyes. These properties are necessary for the third advantage.
  3. It allows a creature to see more of, or all of, an object behind an obstacle. This advantage was pointed out by Leonardo da Vinci, who noted that a vertical column closer to the eyes than an object at which a creature is looking might block some of the object from the left eye but that part of the object might be visible to the right eye.
  4. It gives binocular summation in which the ability to detect faint objects is enhanced.

Other phenomena of binocular vision include utrocular discrimination (the ability to tell which of two eyes has been stimulated by light), eye dominance (the habit of using one eye when aiming something, even if both eyes are open), allelotropia (the averaging of the visual direction of objects viewed by each eye when both eyes are open), binocular fusion or singleness of vision (seeing one object with both eyes despite each eye's having its own image of the object), and binocular rivalry (seeing one eye's image alternating randomly with the other when each eye views images that are so different they cannot be fused).

Binocular vision helps with performance skills such as catching, grasping, and locomotion. It also allows humans to walk over and around obstacles at greater speed and with more assurance. Orthoptists are eyecare professionals who fix binocular vision problems.

Usage examples of "binocular vision".

Ember says that after a while your brain can blend the two pictures as easily as it does for binocular vision.

You can see what you're aiming at,all right-but without binocular vision, you may not be able to tell Preciselhit it.

Buffalo Bill might have done it, but then Buffalo Bill had had binocular vision and I felt pretty certain he'd never performed any of his sharp-shooting feats in dim half-light with numbed hands bound behind his back.

Thanks to those squid eyes-forward-placed for binocular vision-Sheena will be able to navigate through space for us.

The bugs on the mining station had been derisive of binocular vision.

That was a thing Flint missed: the acute, direct binocular vision of the human eyes, eyes difficult to fool.

The Hindmost's gaze converged on Louis: binocular vision with a baseline of three feet.

The Hindmost was spinning around, heads splayed wide apart, looking back, binocular vision with a baseline of three feet.

They were barely close enough together to give him binocular vision--but, unnervingly, Aranimas didn't much bother with binocular vision.

They were barely close enough together to give him binocular vision—.

Birds with front-faced eyes, like owls, have binocular vision, and, like people, don't have to bob their heads.

In the case of the bear there were two optical sensors, as is common in many species, given the advantages of binocular vision and paired organs.