Bama fixed Ryan Williams Drops with VR

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Coleman-Williams, who jumped, put both hands out to catch the pass and whiffed. The ball didn't appear to touch his fingers before hitting him in the numbers and falling to the turf.

"It was because I didn't see it," Coleman-Williams said.

He and Allen looked at his vision "a bunch of different ways." Of course, there was the standard eye test. Cover one eye and read the letters on a chart. Switch eyes and do the same. Coleman-Williams had perfect 20/20 vision, but they already knew that.

"No," he told Allen. "I can see it. It's just when it gets right here at the catch point, I don't know if I'm not looking at it or I can't see the ball."

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...a company that had developed virtual reality technology for elderly patients who suffered traumatic brain injuries to work on their reaction time and coordinated movement.

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What the system tests is what's called binocular motor control. Picture your left and right eye and how when an object comes closer to you, your eyes narrow and converge to track the object. That convergence influences depth perception.

The system is able to graph each eye's movements to see how well they're working in tandem. It looks kind of like an EKG or heart monitor with two lines -- left eye, right eye. When convergence is ideal, the lines are almost inseparable.

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Essentially the user puts on the VR goggles and is shown an object coming at them at varying speeds. By focusing on the act of tracking the object, over and over, the hope is that it trains the eyes to work better in tandem -- to converge as close to perfectly as possible.

Allen describes it as "dialing in" your eyesight. Most players use it for about 5 minutes per session, three sessions per week.

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