Individualized foveated rendering with eye-tracking head-mounted display

Abstract

Foveated rendering (FR) technology is designed to improve the efficiency of graphical rendering processes. In rendering, individualized approaches can help to balance users’ experiences of visual quality and saving computational resource. However, previous studies have not rigorously examined it related with the FR techniques. To address this issue, we developed an individualized FR (IFR) method using different central vision sizes and peripheral vision resolutions across individuals in virtual reality. In three user studies with 88 participants who were divided into groups designated as “large central area (LCA)” and “small central area (SCA),” the effects of IFR were compared with those of using the full-resolution condition and the average FR condition. The results indicate that the LCA group experienced higher visual quality under the IFR and full-resolution conditions than under the average FR condition. In contrast, the SCA group exhibited comparable levels of dependent measures between the IFR and average FR conditions, but both were lower than those of the full-resolution condition. We also evaluated the computational benefits of the proposed IFR method, and the results demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach in saving resources across the two groups. Although lower-bound adjustments may be required for some users, our overall results suggest that IFR is a malleable technology for enhancing rendering efficiency in virtual reality.