Distance estimation of near‐field visual objects in stereoscopic displays

Abstract

Abstract Stereoscopic displays have a promising future because of recent advancements and popularity of handheld devices and maturing head mounted displays. Gesture interaction such as pointing, selection, pinching, and manipulation are now possible in the current virtual environments, where accurate distance judgment is required. In this paper, we address the perception of exocentric distance in stereoscopic displays under two target orientations: horizontal and vertical. Three parallax conditions (on screen, 5 cm from screen, and 10 cm from screen) were considered, where the screen was fixed at a distance of 100 cm from the observer. Four levels of center‐to‐center distance between 10 and 50 cm were employed. The perceptual matching task revealed underestimation in all conditions. The overall judgment of exocentric distance was only about 80% of the actual. We also found a main effect of distance and interaction between layout and distance to be significant. The two important findings of this study are that underestimation of exocentric distance increases as the separation between virtual targets increases and that in vertical orientation, accuracy increases with closer targets. However, the main effects of layout and parallax on accuracy of judgment were not significant. Engineering implications of the results are also discussed in this paper.