We examine the impact of blur on the depth perceived by motion parallax and evaluate the findings in comparison to our previous findings on the impact of blur on stereoacuity.
🚧 The full paper will be published at the end of March. 🚧
Foveated rendering is a key technique for reducing computational load in immersive display systems by lowering image quality in the peripheral visual field while preserving high fidelity in the fovea. While its impact on spatial detail is well understood, its influence on other visual qualities – such as depth from motion parallax – remains unclear. In this work, we investigate how foveated rendering affects motion-based depth perception across the visual field. Building on our previous work on binocular disparity, we use a comparable experimental setup to isolate motion parallax as the sole depth cue and measure depth discrimination thresholds under varying levels of blur and eccentricity. Our initial results show that depth from motion is significantly impaired even by mild foveation, with stronger impairments at higher levels of blur. These findings suggest that motion-based depth cues may be more sensitive to foveated rendering than disparity cues, which we previously found to be largely unaffected in our earlier work. This research provides new insights into how different depth cues are affected by foveation and can guide the design of perceptually optimized foveation strategies for VR and AR applications.