Refresh Rate and Graphical Benchmarks for Mobile VR Application Development

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) technology is quickly becoming more accessible to the general public due to the availability and capabilities of modern smartphone devices. However, such mobile devices are not as powerful as high-end desktop systems where VR is mostly established. Running demanding VR apps leads to performance issues such as lag, excessive heat, and fast battery drainage. To avoid these problems, software factors must be optimised. The user evaluation (N = 51) involved presenting multiple VR scenes (with varying frame rates), requiring participants to judge which scenes felt smooth; the results indicate that anything below 50 FPS was tolerable at best and nauseating at worst. To also measure the performance impact of various software settings, benchmarks were conducted on different smartphones. The results highlight the effects when varying the number of displayed on-screen objects, as well as outlining which settings should be avoid when specifically targeting mobile VR platforms. Heat and battery life were found to be non-issues at recommended performance levels. The proposed work established valuable guidelines which can be helpful for real time applications in development time reduction and complexity simplification from graphical and refresh rate optimization perspectives.