Horizons Optical -- anyone have experience with their lenses?

[jiicken]

Hi all, long time lurker first time poster.

Recently I noticed some lenses on my lab's price list I hadn't seen before, notably Mimesys by Horizons Optical. I called my lab and asked about it and was lucky to get somebody who was wearing a Mimesys lens at that moment. She said it's a top-tier progressive requiring proprietary fitting equipment in the form of a VR-like headset that tracks and records your gaze and designs a progressive lens just for you. The folks at my lab who have tried it absolutely swear by it, with the four or so i've spoken to saying they don't expect they will want for another progressive design so long as nothing earth shattering comes out.

This design in particular is probably outside of my reach, as I don't expect i'm going to be able to convince my doc to pony up for some fancy schmancy magic progressive-designing headset, but their "MaxView" lens touts a feature that intrigued me -- evidently the progressive corridor remains the same width at any add. That's a wild claim and I don't really know what to make of it -- either the low adds are kneecapped and much worse than anything else out there or this is a truly great design.

If nobody has anything to add on this subject I will use a voucher to try this lens and report back as I am a +1.25 add progressive-user myself, but, is there anyone here with any experience fitting Horizons lenses? Particularly MaxView at low-to-medium adds? Thanks all.

[Elvis Is Alive]

Horizons is one of a handful of progressive lens design firms (IOT, Crossbows, Optotech, etc) that many optical labs are using for their private label in-house brand progressives. Maxview is the 2nd highest end one they offer sitting directly below Mimesys which appears to use a modified Meta Quest 2 or similar AR headset to track eye movement.

If the corridor is the same width at any add, i would have to imagine that comes a cost of more blur in higher adds. If you take their marketing info at face value, they use "ClearView" tech to reduce peripheral cylinder swim by 20%.

Maybe the "Binocular Balance" tech helps with a stable corridor. This is supposed to distribute the unwanted cylinder evenly on each side of the corridor.

Read about it here: https://horizonsoptical.com/us/lens-...cular-balance/

Full disclosure, I have not dispensed them though. I have dispensed many IOT lenses. I suspect MaxView is likely comparable to IOT Endless Steady but cant say for sure.

[jiicken]

I was able to source a PDF with some less direct-to-consumer-y information on their lens designs from a rep at my lab, there's a ton of really interesting stuff going on in this PDF. Sadly the filesize is too large to attach it here (will figure out how to link it if anyone is interested). I will summarize the most interesting points.

Evidently every one of their progressive designs has the option to use a "soft" design, as well as a "cube" design and a "sports" design. It describes what they mean by soft, which is exactly what you would think they mean, but by way of explanation for what a "cube" design is, they say "ad-hoc design". Unsure what that means. Possibly dropping optimization by frame shape in cases where a lens needs to be generated prior to receiving a trace? The "sports" option they cite as being optimized for wrap angles. Makes sense. "ClearView" appears to be the run-of-the-mill optimization by frame shape. They offer single vision and progressive designs for high and for very high prescriptions, which insofar as I'm aware is a novel marketing strategy amongst lens manufacturers. They have a technology they call "ThinMax" that appears to thin the lens by utilizing an aspheric front surface -- unsure if that's correct, as I am only assuming this based on a little diagram in this PDF, but they describe it as "changing the curvature of the lens" to optimize thickness. Wow, crazy concept guys. Who Woulda Thunk. That's about eveything that's noteworthy, they get into how the Mimesys system works but it could be pared down to simply "we record where you look most often and design a progressive around that data," lots and lots of yapping. "The user no longer adapts to the progressive lens, but the progressive lens adapts to the user." Pretty slick line if I do say so myself.

Anyhow, I am probably going to acquire a voucher for Maxview and give it a try. Mimesys is extremely interesting to me as a concept, as the idea of measuring the areas most and least frequently explored in one's gaze and using that data to determine the arrangement of unwanted astigmatism sounds like magic to an optician like me who is constantly refining the lifestyle questions I ask my progressive patients in order to determine that exact thing.

I am also a frequent user of IOT designs. I don't think anyone else is doing what they're doing with Digital Ray Path 2 specifically, and I no longer use any single vision or anti-fatigue designs other than Endless SV and Endless+ because of this. I think comparing MaxView to Endless Steady is probably only useful insofar as placing MaxView's value or "category" -- the two designs are priced identically at my lab. I do not ever see anybody replacing Endless Steady in my toolkit with anything short of being truly revolutionary. We shall see how I like MaxView. I will be sure to report back.

[jiicken]

my lab rep called me very shortly after my last reply. stated that optimesh is optimization by position of wear, and clearview is optimization by shape of frame and pushes astigmatism to less useful areas of the frame. that's all she had. sigh. optiboard appears to remain the last bastion for the sorts of discussions i wish to have about these lenses.

[jiicken]

got a pair w/ maxview back a few days ago, its an OK lens. very hard, hour-glass shaped corridor without edge to edge clarity at any part of the distance segment of the lens (which doesn't bother me at all, but i know would bother some of the active emmeteopic population) not much else to say. it's pretty nice. would compare to an autograph 3 or an id lifestyle modern.

i think i'm going to have my lab run a redo with the "soft" version of this design. i'm thinking it may be something i can move my vlux comfort-loving patients into and finally be free of essilor lenses once and for all. will update w/ results.