Inspired by reading the title of [pashute]'s "eye following projector" idea.
Basically put the victim in a hemispherical chamber, with a projector and eye tracking hardware. Project an image onto the surface, and track eye movement, adjusting the image projection constantly as to counterract efforts to look at other parts of the image.
What made me think of this was laying in bed the other night in the dark I had some "floaters" in my field of view, but noticed that they are never dead centre of view, so as I tried to track their movement across the roof, I was actually moving them around as my eyeball tracked. This was at first irritating, but very quickly became very, very disconcerting and I had to get up and turn the lights on to stop it. Imagine being in a room where the field of view acted (perhaps with a lag time of say 1/10 second to maximise the effect) so that you could never actually "look around". Maybe put a bright dot, or worse, a circle slightly off-centre of your field of view. You'd naturally try to look at the spot, or the middle of the circle, etc, but couldn't, no matter what you did, actually look at it because it would move in sync with your eyeballs.
*shudder*
I reckon you'd go mad in minutes.-- Custardguts, Jan 09 2014 Sony Panoramic Projector http://www.engadget...ant-sea-monsters-f/You could use one of these [Zeuxis, Jan 09 2014] I only go mad in large quantities.-- rcarty, Jan 09 2014 I can sort of disengage and de-focus my eyes with remarkably little effort... so for me this would be preferable to what the (Monty Python) Spanish Inquisition had in store.-- bs0u0155, Jan 09 2014 What? - Cushions? - anyway, I too can defocus my eyes very easily (it makes doing those 'magic eye' things or looking at stereographs very easy) so this would be OK.-- hippo, Jan 09 2014 An off-center circle wouldn't work as torture but other images would, such as the victim's dead child or a video of a kneecap being broken with the knowledge there's nothing the victim can do to avoid the fate. People have been torturing each-other for a very, very long time and I believe you've actually found a new way to do it. A very reluctant bun.
Defocusing can easily be dealt with by feeding the victim the inverse of his focus attempt. If he focuses far away use a double image to counter the lost tracking and the right amount of spread to counter the blur.-- Voice, Jan 09 2014 How would you detect the focus attempt? Not easy.
Although I grant you, the focusing muscles are easily dealt with. Which sort of gets around the problem.-- bs0u0155, Jan 09 2014 this sounds like advertiser's dream tv-- cthulhuJon, Jan 10 2014 so this is the great inspiration my ideas bring to?-- pashute, Jul 30 2014 random, halfbakery