Mapping Your Visual Field
You can obtain a crude mapping of your visual field by using a painting program, such as Microsoft Paint. This technique was suggested to me by a correspondent who, like me, has experienced NAION.
Open your painting program (I can open Paint by clicking Start, All Programs, Accessories, Paint) and place a marker in the center of the screen. You may be able to use the jpg file I used, VisualField_Blank (save it to your hard drive and then open it with Paint).
Click on the paintbrush icon and then on the largest marker, as shown below, outlined in red.
Now close one eye, stare at the central marker, and place the cursor on the central X and move it up, down, left, or right until it disappears. You must keep your eye on the central marker, fight the urge to track the moving square. When the square disappears from sight, click the left mouse button and Paint will draw the square at that location. You will find that the square is easier to see when it is moving than when still, so you once it starts to disappear you should stop moving it for a moment and see if it is still in your static visual field or not.
Continue this process all over the drawing area. If you misplace a square, you can erase it later with the eraser (outlined in blue above). After you are satisfied you have mapped the area sufficiently well, use the line drawing tool (outlined in green above) to connect the squares. After connecting the line I used the Paint Bucket tool (outlined in orange above) to fill in the area outside of my visual field. Just click in the area and it will fill with the selected color.
If you make a mistake, click Edit, Undo to reverse it.
In my lower visual field, especially on the right, things are fuzzy once I move away from the center -- I may still be able to see the square, but I could not read a printed character. When I stare at the central marker the fuzzy area also appears a light gray . I set the paintbrush on a much smaller size and changed its color to red and then drew a line around the fuzzy area. I then filled it in with light gray.
I also tried changing the color of the rectangle and seeing how that affected my ability to detect it. I found that as it became more distant from the central point I was no longer able to detect the color, although I could still see the square. This happened at much shorter distances in the gray zone than in my upper visual field.
I found it most comfortable to do this about 18 inches from my 17 inch LCD display.
For my right (good eye), I could see the square anywhere in the drawing area (excepting the blind spot where the optic nerve is located). For my left eye, here is the visual field I created:
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