Quantifying reality of ultra-realistic 3-D displays — the effect of resolution and contrast

Developments in display technology mean that it may soon be possible to create stereoscopic 3-D imagery that cannot be distinguished from its real-world counterpart, i.e., it could pass the so-called Visual Turing Test. To measure how far current display technologies are from this ultimate goal, we built a custom ultra-realistic display — a high dynamic range (HDR) stereoscope, with accurate color and geometric calibration. Then, we used the display to measure how the reduction of display resolution and dynamic range (contrast) affects the sense of realism, relative to a real scene. These two display capabilities have improved greatly in recent years, and it is useful to understand what benefits further development might bring. The display resolution measurements showed that the realism of presented scenes starts dropping rapidly below ~60 pixels per degree, and the gains diminish above that resolution. Our contrast measurement showed a linear reduction in realism as the contrast was reduced. Furthermore, we found that the observers could discriminate between real and virtual scenes in less than half of the trials (when adjusted for the guess rate), demonstrating the ultra-realistic capabilities of our display. Our results provide a clear guide to potential gains in realism, and can inform display design and HDR tone mapping.