Blur in human vision and increased visual realism in virtual environments

Abstract

A challenge for virtual reality (VR) applications is to increase the realism of an observer's visual experience. For this purpose the variation of the blur that an observer experiences in his/her vision, while he/she focuses on a particular location, can be mimicked by blurring the VR computer graphics based on a model of the blur. The blur in human vision is the result of a combination of optical and neural vision processes; namely optical refraction, nonuniform retinal sampling, and cortical magnification. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon, apparently no theoretical model of the blur has been published. In this work we model the combined effect by means of a probabilistic model of the human visual system. The results from the models match common vision experience verifying the validity of the underlying theoretical considerations. The implementation of the model for increased realism in virtual reality is illustrated by means of a rendering of a virtual reality scene, which is processed for two different acts of focusing. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.