Stereoscopic Depth Cues Outperform Monocular Ones on Autostereoscopic Display

The aim of this study is two-fold; first, to compare how certain visual aids contribute in depth estimation tasks on a portable autostereoscopic display; and second, how these depth cues impact on perceived quality. These were studied on a quantitative subjective study using a portable autostereoscopic display in controlled laboratory environment. Test participants evaluated object depths on three-dimensional images, where either 2D cues, 3D cues, or their combinations were provided. The study was conducted using three different compression levels in order to study how image quality affects the perception of depth. The results indicate that the depth estimation task is faster conducted when the participants relied on stereoscopic depth cues compared to situations where only monocular cues were present. Also, depth estimation task is faster conducted with higher quality images. Depth estimation accuracy was also higher with stereoscopic depth cues than with monocular ones. These results suggest that the human visual system can make more reliable depth estimates on portable autostereoscopic displays when stereoscopic cues are present. However, the results of the quality evaluations indicate that, as stated also on previous studies, the added stereoscopic depth does not seem to increase the subjective image quality.