Optimizing spatial resolution in head-mounted displays: evaluating characteristics of peripheral visual field

An ideal head-mounted display (HMD) is a device that provides a visual experience indistinguishable from that given by the naked eye. Such an HMD must display images with spatial resolution surpassing that of the human visual system. However, excessively high spatial resolution is resource-wasting and inefficient. To optimize this balance, we evaluated the spatial resolution characteristics of the human visual system in the peripheral visual area. Our experiment was performed based on a head-centered coordinate system, acknowledging that users can move their eyes freely within the HMD housing fixed on the user’s head. We measured threshold eccentricities where low-pass filtered noise patterns could be distinguished from intact noise patterns, manipulating cut-off spatial frequencies between one to eight cycles per degree. The results revealed clear asymmetries between the temporal and nasal, as well as between the upper and lower visual fields. In the temporal and lower fields, lower cut-off spatial frequencies resulted in higher eccentricity thresholds. Notably, the smaller impact of spatial frequencies in the nasal and upper visual fields is likely due to visual obstruction by facial structures, such as the nose. Our results can serve as a standard for pixel arrangement design in an ideal HMD.