Thinking on Your Feet: Enhancing Foveated Rendering in Virtual Reality During User Activity

David Petrescu, Paul Warren, Zahra Montazeri, Gabriel Strain, Steve Pettifer

2024

Abstract

As prices fall, VR technology is experiencing renewed levels of consumer interest. Despite wider access, VR still requires levels of computational ability and bandwidth that often cannot be achieved with consumer-grade equipment. Foveated rendering represents one of the most promising methods for the optimization of VR content while keeping the quality of the user’s experience intact. The user’s ability to explore and move through the environment with 6DOF separates VR from traditional display technologies. In this work, we explore if the type of movement (Active versus Implied) and attentional task type (Simple Fixations versus Fixation, Discrimination, and Counting) affect the extent to which a dynamic foveated rendering method using Variable Rate Shading (VRS) optimizes a VR scene. Using psychophysics methods we conduct user studies and recover the Maximum Tolerated Diameter (MTD) at which users fail to notice drops in quality. We find that during self-movement, performing a task that requires more attention masks severe shading reductions and that only 31.7% of the headset’s FOV is required to be rendered at the native pixel sampling rate.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Petrescu D., Warren P., Montazeri Z., Strain G. and Pettifer S. (2024). Thinking on Your Feet: Enhancing Foveated Rendering in Virtual Reality During User Activity. In Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP; ISBN 978-989-758-679-8, SciTePress, pages 140-150. DOI: 10.5220/0012459300003660

in Bibtex Style

@conference{grapp24,
author={David Petrescu and Paul Warren and Zahra Montazeri and Gabriel Strain and Steve Pettifer},
title={Thinking on Your Feet: Enhancing Foveated Rendering in Virtual Reality During User Activity},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP},
year={2024},
pages={140-150},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012459300003660},
isbn={978-989-758-679-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP
TI - Thinking on Your Feet: Enhancing Foveated Rendering in Virtual Reality During User Activity
SN - 978-989-758-679-8
AU - Petrescu D.
AU - Warren P.
AU - Montazeri Z.
AU - Strain G.
AU - Pettifer S.
PY - 2024
SP - 140
EP - 150
DO - 10.5220/0012459300003660
PB - SciTePress