Human visual perception of region warping distortions

Abstract

Interactive virtual reality requires at least 60 frames per second in order to ensure smooth motion. For a good immersive experience, it is also necessary to have low end-to-end latency so that user interaction does not suffer from perceptible delays in images presented to the eyes. The Address Recalculation Pipeline (ARP) architecture reduces end-to-end latency in immersive Head Mounted Display (HMD) virtual reality systems. By using the ARP in conjunction with priority rendering, different sections of the scene are updated at different rates. This reduces the overall rendering load and allows for more complex and realistic scenes. Large object segmentation in conjunction with priority rendering further reduces the overall rendering load. However, scene tearing artefacts potentially emerge and region warping was devised to alleviate this. In compensating for the tearing, region warping introduces slight distortions to the scene.Immersive virtual reality systems have humans as integral parts of the system. While researchers do thorough measurements and evaluation of hardware and software performance, the human experience and perception of the system is often neglected. This paper addresses this important issue. We describe our human visual perceptual experimental methodology in detail and present some initial results. Initial experiments in human visual perception of region warping distortions show interesting characteristics which lead us to propose further experimental investigations to clarify their significance.