Measuring Visual Acuity and Stereo Accuracy as Mediated by Immersive Displays

Immersive displays used in virtual and augmented reality systems attempt to provide a plausibly real stimulus to the human eye. However, the intended stimuli are mediated by display hardware such that the image received can be expected to change from what was intended; this is of particular importance to perceptual experiments observing responses to carefully crafted stimuli. This work presents a software tool for measuring two aspects of the received stimuli when using immersive displays: visual acuity and stereo accuracy. Within-participant comparisons are made between two different immersive displays, the HTC Vive and Valve Index, showing the mediating effect of the different displays and the potential utility of such a test for establishing expected bounds on receivable visual information within an immersive virtual environment.