Measured in points ยท higher is better
Peripheral Vision Test
Hold your gaze on the centre dot. Targets appear at the edge. Say what you saw.
Before you start
The median on mouse is 112 pts. Run the test and we will place you against it.
Compared against
Sit about an arm length from the screen and keep your head still. Distance changes this result more than anything else.
The other device classes
Trackpad
Touchscreen
Curve is a fitted baseline plus 1 first attempt recorded here. The baseline is a curve, not a sample: no part of it is a real person. Baseline is an estimate: centred well inside the anatomical field of view, because a browser test only covers the screen. No published dataset was found for it. Per-device offsets are extrapolated, not measured. The baseline is dropped once a device class holds 5,000 real first attempts. See the full distribution.
Hold your gaze on the centre
Sit about an arm length away. Keep your eyes on the centre dot the whole time. Shapes flash at the edge, and you name what you saw afterwards.
Understanding your score
| Band | pts | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Excellent | 160 and above | Strong detection well out into the periphery. |
| Very good | 135 to 159 | Above average across the field. |
| Good | 110 to 134 | A normal, healthy result. |
| Average | 80 to 109 | Where most results land. |
| Below average | 50 to 79 | Often fixation drift rather than vision. |
| Low | 49 and below | Repeat it once. If it holds, see an optometrist. |
How the score is built
Each round places a target at a random angle and a random distance from the centre. Targets further out are worth more, because detecting them is harder. Correctly naming the shape scores more than merely noticing that something appeared.
Your peripheral vision has almost no colour sensitivity and very low acuity, which is why the targets are large and simple. Beyond about 30 degrees from centre, most people can tell that something is there and cannot tell what it is. That transition point is what the score is really measuring.
Keeping your eyes still is the hard part
The instruction that matters is to keep your gaze fixed on the centre dot. The moment your eye moves toward a target, you are no longer testing peripheral vision, you are testing how fast you can look at things.
The urge to glance is close to involuntary, and most low scores on this test come from people who thought they were holding fixation and were not. The centre dot changes subtly during each round and you are asked about it afterwards, which is there to give you something to hold onto.
Sit about an arm length from the screen and keep your head still. Moving closer widens the visual angle the screen covers and makes the test harder in a way that is not comparable across people.
What a real visual field test does differently
Clinical perimetry uses a bowl-shaped instrument, a fixed head position, calibrated light levels, and an eye tracker that discards any trial where fixation was lost. It maps sensitivity point by point and can detect the specific field defects caused by glaucoma, stroke, and retinal disease.
A screen cannot do that. Your distance from the display is unknown, your fixation is unverified, and the screen covers only a fraction of your actual visual field. This test can tell you that something is worth checking. It cannot tell you what.
Peripheral field loss is often painless and gradual enough to go unnoticed for years, which is exactly why it is worth checking properly rather than relying on a web page.
What causes peripheral vision to narrow
Glaucoma is the reason this is worth checking at all. It damages the optic nerve from the outside in, so it takes the periphery first and the centre last. It is typically painless, and because the brain fills in missing regions rather than showing you a black patch, people routinely lose a substantial part of their field before noticing anything. By the time it is obvious, the loss is permanent. Regular eye exams catch it; self-testing does not.
Retinitis pigmentosa produces a slow concentric narrowing, often beginning with night vision. Stroke and other brain injuries can remove a half or a quarter of the field in both eyes at once, in a pattern that follows the visual pathway rather than the eye. A retinal detachment often announces itself as a shadow or curtain moving in from one edge, and that one is an emergency.
The common thread is that peripheral loss is quiet. Almost none of these announce themselves the way blurred central vision does, which is the entire argument for periodic professional checks rather than waiting for symptoms.
The field you use for driving and sport
Driving is where peripheral vision does most of its real work. Detecting a cyclist entering from the side, or brake lights two lanes over, happens well outside the small central region you read with. Many licensing authorities set a minimum horizontal field precisely because central acuity alone is a poor predictor of whether someone can drive safely.
What improves with training is not the field itself but attention across it. Useful field of view, the region from which you can actually extract information in a single glance without moving your eyes, narrows under load and narrows with age, and it is trainable. That is why a driver on a phone misses things that are physically well within their visual field.
The same distinction applies in sport. Players described as having great peripheral vision almost never have unusual retinas. They have learned where to look so that the important things fall in useful places, and learned not to fixate on the ball.
Questions
- Can I test my visual field online?
- Only roughly. Without a fixed viewing distance, verified fixation, and calibrated brightness, a screen test can suggest that something is worth investigating but cannot map a field defect. If your result is low or you notice missing areas, see an optometrist.
- Can peripheral vision be trained?
- Attention across the field can be trained and does improve with practice, particularly for athletes and drivers. The underlying retinal sensitivity does not change. What improves is how much of what you can already see you actually notice.
- Why can I see the target but not tell what shape it is?
- That is normal and it is the point of the test. Cone density falls steeply away from the centre of the retina, so acuity and colour drop off long before motion and presence detection do. Beyond roughly 30 degrees, almost nobody can identify shapes.
- Does screen size change my score?
- Yes. A larger screen or sitting closer covers more of your visual field and pushes targets further into your periphery. Sit about an arm length away and use the same setup when comparing results.
- Can this test detect glaucoma?
- No. Glaucoma removes the periphery gradually and painlessly, and this page cannot verify your fixation, your distance from the screen, or your screen brightness, all of which move the result more than an early defect would. Only clinical perimetry with a fixed head position and eye tracking can map a field defect. Treat any surprising result as a reason to book an eye exam.
- Why do I not notice missing areas in my own vision?
- Because the brain fills them in from the surrounding image rather than showing you a gap. You do not perceive your own blind spot either. That filling-in is exactly why peripheral loss can progress a long way before anyone notices it.
- How much peripheral vision do you need to drive?
- Most licensing authorities set a minimum horizontal field, separate from the acuity requirement, because central sharpness alone does not predict safe driving. The exact standard varies by country and it is measured with clinical perimetry, not with a web page.
Where does the curve behind this page come from, and when does it get thrown away? The methodology page names the source of every reference distribution on the site, the sample size behind it, and the point at which real results replace it.