Fixed Vs. Digital?
For the past 40 years or so, progressives have been delivered with the design molded on the front of the lens. And, while they have gone through many improvements and optimizations, these lenses may still have unwanted blur and magnification issues. Digital Lens technologies produce better results in prescription lenses by creating a customized design for each patient. No two patients are the exactly the same, so neither should their eyeglass lenses.
In a fixed lens, the manufacturer molds the progressive add onto the front surface at the factory. This is referred to as a semi-finished progressive lens blank. An optical laboratory then grinds and polishes the back surface with spherical curves for the prescription. Digital Progressive Lenses starts as a molded semi-finished single vision lens blank. When cutting the back surface, the laboratory’s computer determines the correct combination of complex curves that produce the prescription as a progressive, all on the same surface. In addition, other calculations can be done to re-design the lens’ periphery with the designer’s understanding of lens pantoscopic tilt, wrap angle and vertex distance. A fixed, front surface lens design has preset characteristics like viewing zone sizes and corridor lengths that are the same for all patients, only the prescription powers vary. They’re not designed for individual needs. Digital back surface lenses can be optimized at the time of production based on specific customer measurements, lifestyle needs, the frame they chose and the way that the frame holds the lenses in front of their eyes.
When a fixed design is worn at different tilts, wrap angles and distances from the eye, the effective power of the lens for most prescriptions changes a small amount. However, the power in the periphery changes more – and therefore changes the way the lens works for the wearer. Try it. If you wear glasses, tilt them up and down; move them out and in – the power you see changes even though the prescription of the lens doesn’t. That helps to explain one reason why different people have different experiences with the same fixed design progressive lens, even when they have virtually the same prescription. A fixed lens is more of a general-purpose compromise – it requires the customer to learn to use the lens, mostly because of new zone sizes and blur in the periphery.
Digitally enhanced lenses deliver the prescription at lens center and across the periphery more precisely taking tilt, wrap and vertex into account. The result is a lens that is more adjusted to the wearer’s actual prescription for clear vision all over the lens. So, there’s very little needed to “learn to use” the new lens. It’s like HD TV. Every customer understands the precision that digital delivers when viewing an HD image on an HD TV or how crisp the colors and images are on so many of the new digital tablets and cameras. The TV picture on an older analog TV is flatter and less vibrant.