The effects of HMD attributes, different display and scene characteristics on human visual perception of region warping distortions

Abstract: The Address Recalculation Pipeline (ARP) is a graphics display architecture that was designed to reduce user head rotational latency in immersive Head Mounted Display (HMD) virtual reality. A demand driven rendering technique known as priority rendering was devised for use in conjunction with the ARP system to reduce the overall rendering load. Region warping was devised along with several other techniques to facilitate priority rendering. Region warping however causes slight distortions to appear in the graphics. While this technique might improve system performance, immersive virtual reality systems have humans as integral parts of the system, hence the underlying issue of how humans might perceive and react to the system cannot be neglected. This paper addresses this important issue from a human visual perception perspective. In this paper, we present the results of three experiments that examine a number of factors that might contribute to a user's perception of distortions caused by region warping. In particular, these experiments investigate whether HMD display attributes, anti-aliasing and virtual environments with different scene complexities might affect user's visual perception of region warping distortions.