Three-dimensional pictorial displays, incorporating depth cues via stereopsis, offer a potential means of displaying information in a natural way to enhance situational awareness and provide increases in operator performance. Conventional computational techniques rely on asymptotic transformations and symmetric clipping to provide the stereo pair. New techniques that replace these conventional computations were developed to increase the control of the stereo-viewing space. Also, the effective region of stereopsis cuing was determined empirically by comparing perceived depth against computed depth. Conventional asymptotic transformations, used to map the visual scene to the stereo viewing volume, allow a single, specific scene distance to be fixed at the screen location. The new piece-wise linear approach allows creative partitioning of the depth viewing volume, with freedom to place the depth cuing emphasis where desired. Asymmetric clipping makes better use of the available display surface than symmetric clipping, and provides increased fields-of-view throughout the depth-viewing volume. The results of the experiment determining the effective region of stereopsis cuing indicate that a practical viewing volume falls between -25%and+60% of the viewer-to-screen distance. Also, the data revealed that increasing viewer-to-CRT distances provide increasing amounts of usable depth.

Date Published: 1 September 1990
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 1256, Stereoscopic Displays and Applications, (1 September 1990); doi: 10.1117/12.19891

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1256:
Stereoscopic Displays and Applications
John O. Merritt; Scott S. Fisher, Editor(s)