Wired News: Sharper Image, Better Performance

Wired News: Sharper Image, Better Performance: "With over 10 inches of rain in January alone, one would be hard-pressed to find a single person sporting sun glasses at Nike headquarters in Hillsboro, Oregon. But that hasn’t kept Nike designers from thinking about sunny-weather sports.

The company has teamed up with contact lens maker Bausch and Lomb to create performance-enhancing contact lenses called MaxSight. They're a tinted version of daily disposal lenses for athletes that reduce glare and improve visual acuity.

They block nearly all the sun's damaging UVA and UVB rays just like sunglasses, but their optics can also give athletic performance a boost."...

The lenses make objects appear sharper by eliminating 90 percent of blue light -- the primary component in "visual noise." Then, in a process Nike calls "light architecture," MaxSight manipulates the brightness and hue of the remaining light transmitted through the lens. The result is improvement of visual acuity. The seams on baseballs are sharper, images in shadows are more clear, and every blade of grass has definition.

"There is a dramatic 'wow’ effect when you put them on," says Reichow.