Etched reticles are great! They're even perfectly usable when/if the battery dies.
The vortex Strike fire is a red dot scope. If you have vision defects and are using the optic without corrective lenses, then yes the dot may be distorted.
Have you tried an actual scope with an illuminated reticle ? Any decent illuminated scope has a diopter adjustable eyepiece to correct for near or far sightedness but obviously it cant correct asymetrical visual defects. Now having said that, usually if you have the center of the reticle dialed in sharp, that is what one focuses on as the aiming point and usually you would be seeing the aiming point on the target better with some magnification than without. I for instance am a lousy shot with iron sights because I cant see the target at 100 or more yards worth a damn to begin with and then if I do focus on the target I cant see the sights worth a damn either. Now with a 4-16x50 scope I can see the target real nice at 10+ magnification and I can shoot 1/4MOA groups with my 308 rifle, which is the most accurate rifle I have. With my 223 or 343 about 1/2MOA because that is what they can do reliably. I would probably be shooting 6moa+ with a red dot or iron sights. I also have short sightedness and astigmatism but it does not impact me with a good scope. Now I will say that I hate cheap scopes that have chromatic aberration (color banding on high contrast targets). I also will not buy a scope that does not have a focus knob that allows you to focus the sight picture for the distance you are shooting at.
Dont confuse the sight image with the reticle focus they are 2 different things. The eyepiece adjustment is to get the reticle as sharp as possible, then you should lock it. The image/side focus is to get the target area sharp and minimise relative movement of the reticle vs the target if you move your eye up or down or left to right relative to the eyepiece. If the image plane and reticle plane are not coincident then one will never get a good group because any position change of your eye to the eyepiece will put the crosshairs in a different spot on the target. I bought quite an expensive scope (over $700) than had no image focus adjustment and I could not shoot a group with it at 100 yards because of this exact problem and there was nothing I could do to correct it because it had no side focus adjustment. That went right back to the store after its first range session and lead to me buying the first Vortex PST FFP scope I owned..
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the differences between FFP and SFP scopes (I'm sure we all know the difference, but can explain how it affects astigmatisms. And for astigmatism I find that green, vs red, illumination gives less blur or halo. An adjustable parallax makes a big difference too.
if your response was to me, I am the op.
Yes I had blur wearing eye glasses, which supposedly I have perfect vision with my glasses on, or better. Doesn't seem like it.
I heard I can tell my doctor about shooting sports and they can add something to the prescription and reduce or eliminate ?
I do not might buying prism sights, they looked great last year checking them out at cabelas. I have not decided on one yet.
I was waiting for new glasses, my time is up, its time for new glasses so now I can get new lenses that maybe correct for this, open up opportunity to other technologies ?
...
I’ve an astigmatism and have a problem with “dot” type sights showing a “star burst” or multiple dots. I use a Vortex Razor on my Marvel 22lr conversion on a 1911 frame, not an inexpensive optic.
Talking to my eye doctor my glasses are cut to correct for it, but I have to be using the focal point in the center of the lens to get full correction or so I understood it. Wearing progressives which don’t do much correcting of anything in the upper corners of the lens which is what I normally look through when sighting, they are not a lot of help.
I do however have a Vortex PST gen 2 with an illuminated reticle that seems to work just fine. I don’t shoot in the dark but turning it up enough to have it definitely visible in bright light or in dusk conditions I’ve been happy.
"Saepe errans, numquam dubitans --Frequently in error, never in doubt".
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interesting. I went and looked at my vortex strikefire. No glasses I saw a terrible blob of 6-7 red dots all over in a crappy blob not very round circle. With glasses on it tightened up to about three dots tighter but not nearly as good as the prism stuff at cabelas gun counter.
Ill as my doc about doing what you did.
Old eyes here too, my Red Dots do blur, or actually look like 3 red dots . . . but not any of my illuminated scopes, which are all an adjustable Red Dot in the middle.