Potential Effects of Dynamic Parallax on Eyesight in Virtual Reality System

Hui Fang, Dongdong Weng, Jie Guo, Ruiying Shen, Haiyan Jiang, Ziqi Tu

Abstract: Virtual desktop office and VR theater become popular. Using HMD at high frequencies and for a long time has become an indispensable requirement. Whether this will affect the user’s eyesight is one of the major concerns. This paper presents an investigation of a dynamically changed parallax for 2D content in VR systems and potential effects on eyesight. By controlling the horizontal movement of the left and right views, parallax is continuously and slowly adjusted within comfort zone. This can alleviate the static fixation of the eyes to the fixed distance of the display, relieving visual discomfort and reducing the degree of visual impairment. The experimental results show that dynamic parallax can alleviate the visual discomfort of watching videos in HMD and reduce the potential adverse effects on eyesight to some extent. Moreover, the uniform variation parallax has a better effect than the jump parallax.