On the benefits of stereo graphics in virtual obstacle avoidance tasks

In virtual reality, stereo graphics is a very common way of increasing the level of perceptual realism in the visual part of the experience. However, stereo graphics comes at cost, both in technical terms and from a user perspective. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of an experiment to see if stereo makes any quantifiable, statistically significant difference in the ability to avoid collisions with virtual obstacles while navigating a 3-D space under constant acceleration. Our results indicate that for this particular application scenario, stereo does provide a significant benefit in terms of the amount of time that participants were able to avoid obstacles.