A Review of Resolution Losses for AR/VR Foveated Imaging Applications

Foveated imaging is of great interest for Augmented and Virtual Reality applications. The resolution losses off-axis simulated in foveated imaging are modelled using cone density on the retina. This article reviews the other factors limiting the resolution off-axis in AR/VR, in particular the impact of the eye lens. Several off-axis resolution simulations are proposed and compared in order to provide some theoretical compression ratios for 4K and 8K display systems. A model taking into account both the cone density across the retina and the optical performance of the eye lens is proposed and evaluated. The variability and challenges of modelling the human eye resolution losses are also discussed, in particular in the case of age-dependence.