Enhancing User Experience in Virtual Reality with Radial Basis Function Interpolation Based Stereoscopic Camera Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method using radial basis function interpolation for automated stereoscopic camera control in VR, enhancing perceived depth without increasing discomfort, and includes an immersive authoring interface.

Contribution

It presents the first practical approach for improving depth perception in VR using existing HMDs and introduces an immersive stereoscopic cinematography authoring interface.

Findings

User study shows improved perceived depth and picture quality.

Adding depth of field did not enhance user experience.

Method maintains comfort levels comparable to default settings.

Abstract

Providing a depth-rich Virtual Reality (VR) experience to users without causing discomfort remains to be a challenge with today's commercially available head-mounted displays (HMDs), which enforce strict measures on stereoscopic camera parameters for the sake of keeping visual discomfort to a minimum. However, these measures often lead to an unimpressive VR experience with shallow depth feeling. We propose the first method ready to be used with existing consumer HMDs for automated stereoscopic camera control in virtual environments (VEs). Using radial basis function interpolation and projection matrix manipulations, our method makes it possible to significantly enhance user experience in terms of overall perceived depth while maintaining visual discomfort on a par with the default arrangement. In our implementation, we also introduce the first immersive interface for authoring a unique 3D stereoscopic cinematography for any VE to be experienced with consumer HMDs. We conducted a user study that demonstrates the benefits of our approach in terms of superior picture quality and perceived depth. We also investigated the effects of using depth of field (DoF) in combination with our approach and observed that the addition of our DoF implementation was seen as a degraded experience, if not similar.