3D Visual Communications

7.3 QoE Oriented System Design

When using 3D displays to simulate the binocular perception of a complex real scene, the 3D display must carefully regenerate all standard depth cues such as binocular disparity, occlusion, motion, and shading. In other words, the geometric information presented to two eyes from the scene and the displays must be the same. However, researches and experience [115–123] suggest that the depth delivered by the 3D display generally appears unattended or exaggerated relative to the real scene. These flattened or exaggerated effects may create unnatural conflicts for binocular fusion and cause visual fatigue. When designing a QoE oriented system, they are important factors to consider. In the following, we give a short description of the influence of accommodation and blur on binocular fusion, depth perception, and visual fatigue.

7.3.1 Focus Cues and Perceptual Distortions

Works in [124–127] show the evidence that the depth perception is generated as a minimum-variance estimate from depth cues. Works in [128, 129] propose that if the noise at each cue is independent and modeled as Gaussian distribution, the perceived depth can be expressed as the minimum-variance estimate:

where Z_i is the relative depth to a reference point specified by cue i and σ_i is the standard deviation of depth estimation using that cue. Generally, the 3D displays provide the following ...