P3D Re: 3D realism and focus cues

[GBMars <GBMars@xxxxxxx>]

Dave Spacey wrote:
>Phil Palmer asked about real-time focus adjustment in the viewer.  If you
>could be sure of doing it fast enough it would probably be close to ideal,
>simply because that is how the eye/brain works.  The whole world looks
>sharp because the eye flits around the scene rapidly refocussing as it
>goes.  I suspect that knowledge of this inspired Phil's original question.

>As for whether this would fix cardboarding, well I'm not convinced.  The
>consensus I've seen on this list seems to be that low image resolution is
>the main cause.  By reducing the stereoscopic cues within an object this
>causes it to look flatter.

When the idea was first raised my reaction was why bother with all that
processing just to de-focus part of the image?  I think the brain does a
lot to *ignore* the parts of the image not currently under scrutiny, and
doesn't much care about whether it's in focus.  But if you had the
processing power to manipulate the image in real-time like that you
could also "warp" it to be almost holographic.

>I've a strong suspicion that there are psychological causes in addition.

I agree.  And improving the approximation to reality is one way to
overcome the problem of expectations:  I think the perception of
"cardboarding" results from recognizing that the scenes is not quite
"real" and reverting to the closest "expected" (previously experienced)
interpretation, a cardboard cutout.  Given enough experience with
viewing stereo images this false interpretation dies out.

That said, I agree that lack of resolution (and thus definition of depth)
is a primary contributor to the problem.

Greg M.



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