Stereoscopic Brightness Roll-Off in Augmented Reality

Abstract

The increasing demand for power-efficient immersive displays has led to a growing need for effective power-saving strategies. Brightness roll-off (BRO), a technique that has shown promise in reducing power consumption with minimal impact on perception in desktop and virtual reality (VR) displays, remains largely unexplored in augmented reality (AR). We investigate the effectiveness of BRO as a power-saving approach in AR under stereoscopic viewing conditions, examining its perceptual impacts and modeled power savings for $\mu$LED and LCoS displays. Our findings demonstrate that BRO has a negligible effect on perceptual sensitivity in most cases compared to computational metric predictions, highlighting its potential as a perceptually optimized brightness reduction technique in HMDs and the need for psychophysical validation of such metrics. The results provide valuable insights into the acceptable levels of roll-off in a range of images and additive contrasts, underscoring the potential of BRO as a power-saving solution in AR.