Keep Your Eyes on the Target: Hands-Free Pace Audio for VOR Training

A VOR exercise asks you to do one thing that is easy to describe and hard to sustain: keep your eyes on the target while your head moves. Every glance back at a speed gauge interrupts that task.

That tension shaped Pace Audio in Eye Rehab 5.07.101. The feature does not add another instruction to watch. It moves cadence and, when tracking is available, pace correction into audio so your attention can stay on the target.

Choose the amount of pace feedback you want

VOR x1 and VOR x2 sessions now offer three modes:

• Off keeps all pace audio silent.
• Ticks plays a steady, metronome-like pulse at the current beats-per-minute target.
• Tones alternates between two short pitches at that same cadence.

Ticks and Tones solve the basic timing problem: you can hear the requested rhythm without looking away. They are cadence cues, not measurements of how accurately your head is moving.

The cadence player and the correction player are separate. A correction cue does not restart, delay, or replace the underlying beat. That separation matters because an irregular beat is difficult to follow precisely when you are already concentrating on gaze stability and symptoms.

The sustained tone means your pace has stayed off target

When live head tracking is available, Eye Rehab can compare measured head speed with the current target. A separate sustained tone begins only after your pace has remained too slow or too fast for 1.5 seconds. A lower cue means slow; a higher cue means fast. The existing on-screen state carries the same meaning, so pitch is not the only way to understand the feedback.

The cue does not flicker on and off at the edge of the target range. After it starts, your pace must return to a narrower recovery range and remain there for half a second before the correction stops. This entry-and-recovery design is deliberate: momentary variation should not turn into noisy audio.

The labels describe the relationship between measured pace and the active target. They are coaching states, not a diagnosis, an outcome score, or a claim that one pace is therapeutic for every person.

What happens without camera access

Cadence and correction have different dependencies:

• Ticks and Tones keep working when camera tracking is unavailable, denied, or turned off.
• The sustained correction cue stops because Eye Rehab no longer has a live head-speed signal to compare with the target.

The app fails closed on correction. It does not guess that you are slow or fast when tracking is absent. You can still follow the audible cadence, and the screen makes the tracking state visible.

This distinction is also useful when troubleshooting. Hearing the beat but not a correction cue can be expected if camera permission is off, the face is out of tracking range, or the movement is too small for a reliable pace comparison.

Clinician-assigned BPM stays authoritative

There are two ways a pace target can enter a session.

If your clinician assigned a BPM through your program, that number is locked for the exercise. You can choose Off, Ticks, or Tones, but Pace Audio cannot overwrite the prescription. Your personal BPM preference remains saved for self-guided exercises and becomes available again when no clinician target is assigned.

If there is no assigned BPM, you can select the cadence that fits your current exercise instructions. The audio follows that target; it does not decide what the target should be.

That boundary is important. Audio feedback can make a prescribed or selected pace easier to follow, but it should not quietly become an autonomous progression system.

Pace Audio does not change your program

Pace Audio is execution support. It does not:

• diagnose a vestibular, neurological, visual, or balance condition;
• decide whether VOR x1 or VOR x2 is appropriate for you;
• change duration, background, stance, target size, or exercise difficulty;
• increase your BPM because you stayed in range;
• tell you to continue through unsafe or worsening symptoms.

Follow the pace, duration, symptom limits, and safety setup provided by your clinician. If you have not been assessed, are unsure whether VOR exercises fit your situation, or develop severe, unusual, or persistent symptoms, stop and seek guidance from a qualified health professional.

How to try it

Open a VOR x1 or VOR x2 session in Eye Rehab, pause before starting if needed, and open Pace Audio. Choose Off, Ticks, or Tones. If the exercise came from a clinician program, you will see that its BPM is assigned and locked.

Start with the mode that demands the least extra attention. The aim is not to chase every cue. It is to make the active pace easier to follow while your eyes remain on the target.

Pace Audio is included in Eye Rehab 5.07.101 for iOS and Android.