Psychophysical Assessment of Perceptual Performance With Varying Display Frame Rates

This study assesses the impact of display refresh rate on the perception of dynamic visual stimuli in humans. A projection platform was developed in that context, allowing control of the frame rate on a trial-by-trial basis. Using this display, we introduce a series of psychophysical experiments aimed to quantitatively assess objective perceptual performance at different frame rates. Tasks that are often implicitly performed when watching movies on a television set, or when wearing a head mounted display, were chosen: speed discrimination, spatial discrimination, and reading abilities, with stimuli undergoing horizontal motion in a wide range of speeds (
$16-38\;\text{deg/s}$
). The results show that whatever the stimuli or the task, performance is significantly better at high frame rate (HFR) compared to 60 Hz, providing clear-cut evidence that low refresh rates limit the ability to reliably analyze moving stimuli. These results extend those of previous psychophysical experiments performed at low refresh rates, further characterize genuine visual performance in humans and provide an objective benchmarking methodology allowing to assess visual performance with a variety of displays. Results indicate that for low resolution displays, where increasing spatial resolution is not an option, increasing frame rate could benefit motion perception. We discuss these results and their implications with regards to current and emerging categories of visual displays, such as head mounted displays.