Exploring the Effects of Foveated Rendering on Virtual Reality Game Graphics

This study explores foveated rendering for its quality impact on players in virtual reality (VR) video game settings. Foveated rendering has the potential to decrease the performance cost by only rendering the part of the scene where the user is looking at a higher resolution, which it achieves with the use of an eye tracker. A user study is conducted to test the perceived visual quality by playing a fast-paced shooter game that requires many eye and head movements using a head-mounted display (HMD). The game is played with three different types of foveation: no foveation, static, and dynamic foveated rendering. Results show that the majority of participants did not notice a difference in the visual quality between the foveated and non-foveated game versions.