Dynamic Visual Dominance in Stereoscopic Foveation

• Daniel Jiménez Navarro, Max Planck Institute for Informatics


• Colin Groth, New York University


• Kenneth Chen, New York University


• Qi Sun, New York University


• Karol Myszkowski, Max Planck Institute for Informatics


• Hans-Peter Seidel, Max Planck Institute for Informatics


• Ana Serrano, Universidad de Zaragoza

We show that visual dominance is not a static, eye-fixed percept, but varies dynamically between the eyes as a function of gaze direction and peripheral offset from the fovea. Consequently, different regions of a stereoscopic image are dominated by different eyes depending on the fixation point. Left: Our retinal dominance maps for the left and right eyes obtained from our psychophysical experiments. The central white markers indicate the fixation point, and the bottom scale denotes retinal eccentricity. Red and blue colors indicate the level of dominance toward the left and right eyes, respectively. As can be observed, the temporal viewing hemifield (corresponding to the nasal retinal region) consistently dominates over the nasal viewing hemifield (corresponding to the temporal retinal region), particularly at larger eccentricities, with the exception of the blind spots (dashed circles). Right: We leverage the map to introduce asymmetric blur for foveated rendering. With standard foveated rendering as reference, the first approach applies a static dominance, introducing additional blur in the left-eye only, assuming right-eye dominance. Our method, shown in the last column, accounts for dynamic dominance changes by applying additional blur according to the dynamic dominance maps of each eye. Please refer to the difference in blurriness between the two bears for better visualization. While the static approach applies a stronger blur to the nominally non-dominant left eye, the dominance maps reveal a local dominance switch in this region, which can lead to visible artifacts. In contrast, our method adapts to this switch, shifting additional blur between eyes where it is perceptually less noticeable. By leveraging gaze-dependent, dynamically varying visual dominance, our approach enables stronger localized blur with reduced artifacts.

Abstract

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In human vision, the inputs perceived by each eye do not contribute equally to the final percept. Instead, visual dominance influences how these inputs are fused, giving more weight to one eye view over the other. While eye dominance has been traditionally treated as a static, eye-fixed property, recent evidence suggests that dominance can vary with viewing conditions. In this work, we systematically characterize dynamic visual dominance across the visual field, with a particular focus on peripheral vision, where perceptual asymmetries are most relevant for stereoscopic rendering. Through two complementary psychophysical experiments, we first show that tolerance to eye-asymmetric blur at the fovea under binocular viewing depends on gaze direction, confirming that eye dominance is not spatially invariant. We then show that peripheral dominance is primarily governed by retinal eccentricity, with consistent naso-temporal asymmetries and dominance reversals around the blind spots. We leverage our insights in a dominance-contingent rendering application, where additional blur is selectively applied to the perceptually non-dominant eye regions under binocular viewing. Compared to static dominance approaches, our method enables stronger localized quality reductions, illustrating the practical relevance of dynamic peripheral dominance for stereoscopic foveated rendering. Thus, our goal through this work is to show how visual dominance behaves dynamically in both fovea and periphery, indicating how foveation techniques could benefit from it.

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