Head-mounted displays (HMDs) in use today have fairly limited resolution, but the extends to which this low resolution may be detrimental to various tasks is not well known. We have studied the effect of low resolution on distance perception by letting experimental subjects estimate distances to objects in computer-generated 3D scenes. The images have been presented at varying resolutions both binocularly and biocularly on a workstation screen viewed through a Cyberscope stereoscopic device and biocularly in a flight helmet HMD. Our results indicate: (1) For good distance judgments, anti-aliasing is more important than stereo. In fact, stereo may even be detrimental in low resolution images. (2) Anti-aliasing works well as a resolution-enhancer. (3) The fuzziness of the LCD HMD screens gives an anti-aliasing effect, partially offsetting the low resolution. (4) Subjects utilize different estimation strategies depending on the resolution of the images to minimize their estimation errors. (5) Error estimates vary depending on the target object shape - there is a tendency for better estimates for those objects whose sides line up with the coordinate axes. (6) The differences between subjects are considerably larger than those within subjects.
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