Depth Perception Under Scaled Motion Parallax in Virtual Reality

This thesis investigates the impact of mismatch between virtual and physical motion on the perception of object shape. We varied the gain between virtual and physical head motion and measured the effect on depth, distance and shape perception. Our results showed that under monocular viewing, both depth and distance settings decreased with increasing gain, especially at close distances. The average effect sizes of gain were up to -0.061 m/gain unit and -0.40 m/gain unit on depth and distance, respectively, when measured on a standard fold with depth of 1 m. Observers experienced less distortions than predicted from a geometric model and very little depth distortion (not statistically significant effect of gain) under binocular viewing. The distance distortion caused by gain was reduced by up to 56.6% compared to monocular viewing. Binocular cues to depth and distance and large distance (at 6 m) enhance humans’ tolerance to visual and kinesthetic mismatch.