Gaze-directed and saliency-guided approaches of stereo camera control in interactive virtual reality

Despite remarkable advances in virtual reality (VR) technologies, serious challenges remain in making extended VR sessions with head-mounted displays (HMDs) thoroughly comfortable. 3D stereo imagery can cause discomfort and eye fatigue due to poor stereo camera settings that result in extreme disparities and vergenceaccommodation conflicts. The default stereoscopic parameters of consumer HMDs produce images with shallow depth to circumvent these issues. In this work, we propose a methodology to utilize the gaze-directed and visual saliency-guided paradigms for automatic stereo camera control in real-time interactive VR by employing the basics of stereo grading. We evaluate these two approaches at different levels of interaction, first through a user study and then through a performance benchmark. The results show that the gaze-directed approach outperforms the saliency-guided approach in the VEs tested and both methods are able to convey a better overall depth feeling than the default HMD setting without hindering visual comfort. It is also shown that both approaches lead to a significant overall enhancement of the VR experience in the more interactive VE.

Automated summary

Despite advances in virtual reality technologies, extended VR sessions with head-mounted displays (HMDs) still face challenges in terms of comfort. In this study, a methodology using gaze-directed and visual saliency-guided paradigms for automatic stereo camera control in real-time interactive VR was proposed. The results showed that the gaze-directed approach outperformed the saliency-guided approach, both improving the overall depth feeling without hindering visual comfort in the tested virtual environments (VEs).