A user-controlled assessment approach to perceptual quality in autostereoscopic displays for mobile gaming

Conventional autostereoscopic quality assessment focuses on the physical properties and not on the perceptual aspects; however, the user visual quality verifications, especially in mobile gaming, is also crucial since personal experience determines the success of these products. For evaluating the quality features of autostereoscopic displays, especially in terms of viewing angle or viewing field, most research employed a set of pre-determined and discrete viewing angles for the design of testing scheme. It is argued that, for handheld autostereoscopic displays in particular, the evaluation results with more precision be obtained if the quality threshold parameter can be set on a continuous basis and can be actively adjusted by the subjects. This study therefore proposes an innovative method that employs active user-controlled testing to evaluate visual quality perception for mobile gaming autostereoscopic displays. A laboratory experiment was used to assess the feasibility of this method. This experiment also investigated, by means of user-controlled adjustment method, possible defective features in perceptual display quality and at which screen angles these defective features become prominent. Our results confirmed that crosstalk is the primary defective attribute in display quality, over other defective attributes such as blurs and non-stereoscopic images, but further revealed prominent individual differences in locating these defects. Our study suggests great advantages of this user controlled method in terms of the resolution and reliability of the data, especially in quantifying individual differences, and positive subject feedback, in comparison with the conventional approach with the predetermined discrete settings of visual angles.