Modeling and Optimizing Eye Vergence Response to Stereoscopic Cuts, SIGGRAPH 2014

Modeling and Optimizing Eye Vergence Response to Stereoscopic Cuts

Krzysztof Templin^{1, 2}     Piotr Didyk¹     Karol Myszkowski²     Mohamed M. Hefeeda³     Hans-Peter Seidel²     Wojciech Matusik<sup>1    

1</sup> MIT CSAIL    ² MPI Informatik    ³ Qatar Computing Research Institute

Unexpected changes of disparity in stereoscopic 3D imagery, such as those introduced by cuts in S3D films, are challenging for the audience. Using an eye-tracker, we recorded eye vergence responses of 16 subjects to step-like changes in disparity (left). Then, a model of adaptation time was derived, and parameters for the average observer estimated. Having such a predictor enables, for example, optimization of film editing operations to best match the human depth adaptation abilities (right). The colors of the lines connecting points of interest before and after the cut visualize the corresponding vergence adaptation times.

Pictures from Dracula 4D courtesy of Red Star 3D, www.redstar3d.com.

Abstract

Sudden temporal depth changes, such as cuts that are introduced by video edits, can significantly degrade the quality of stereoscopic content. Since usually not encountered in the real world, they are very challenging for the audience. This is because the eye vergence has to constantly adapt to new disparities in spite of conflicting accommodation requirements. Such rapid disparity changes may lead to confusion, reduced understanding of the scene, and overall attractiveness of the content. In most cases the problem cannot be solved by simply matching the depth around the transition, as this would require flattening the scene completely. To better understand this limitation of the human visual system, we conducted a series of eye-tracking experiments. The data obtained allowed us to derive and evaluate a model describing adaptation of vergence to disparity changes on a stereoscopic display. Besides computing user-specific models, we also estimated parameters of an average observer model. This enables a range of strategies for minimizing the adaptation time in the audience.

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Citation

Krzysztof Templin, Piotr Didyk, Karol Myszkowski, Mohamed M. Hefeeda, Hans-Peter Seidel, Wojciech Matusik
Modeling and Optimizing Eye Vergence Response to Stereoscopic Cuts
ACM Transactions on Graphics 33(4) (Proc. SIGGRAPH 2014, Vancouver, Canada)

@article{Templin2014,
  author = { 
	Krzysztof Templin and
	Piotr Didyk and 
	Karol Myszkowski and 
	Mohamed M. Hefeeda and 
	Hans-Peter Seidel and 
	Wojciech Matusik},
  title = {Modeling and Optimizing Eye Vergence Response to Stereoscopic Cuts},
  journal = {ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH)},
  year = {2014},
  volume = {33},
  number = {4}
}

© 2014 The Authors. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution.
The definitive version was published in ACM Transactions on Graphics 33(4) (Proc. SIGGRAPH 2014). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2601097.2601148

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Aude Oliva, Lavanya Sharan, Zoya Bylinskii, Sylvain Paris, YiChang Shih, Tobias Ritschel, Beata Wójciak, Katarina Struckmann, David Levin, Eliška Didyk, and the Anonymous Subjects who took part in our perceptual studies. This work was partially supported by NSF IIS-1111415 and NSF IIS-1116296.