Determining the Relative Benefits of Pairing Virtual Reality Displays with Applications

Over the last century, virtual reality (VR) technologies (stereoscopic displays in particular) have repeatedly been advertised as the future of movies, television, and more recently, gaming and general HCI. However after each wave of commercial VR products, consumer interest in them has slowly faded away as the novelty of the experience wore off and its benefits were no longer perceived as enough to outweigh the cost and limitations. Academic research has shown that the amount of benefit a VR technology provides depends in the application it is used for and that, contrary to how these technologies are often marketed, there is currently no one-size-fits-all 3D technology. In this paper we present an evaluation framework designed to determine the quality of depth cues produced when using a 3D display technology with a specific application. We also present the results of using this framework to evaluate some common consumer VR technologies. Our framework works by evaluating the technical properties of both the display and application against a set of quality metrics. This framework can help identify the 3D display technology which provides the largest benefit for a desired application.