Binocular Information Improves the Reliability and Consistency of Pictorial Relief

Abstract

Binocular disparity is an important cue to three-dimensional shape. We assessed the contribution of this cue to the reliability and consistency of depth in stereoscopic photographs of natural scenes. Observers viewed photographs of cluttered scenes while adjusting a gauge figure to indicate the apparent three-dimensional orientation of the surfaces of objects. The gauge figure was positioned on the surfaces of objects at multiple points in the scene, and settings were made under monocular and binocular, stereoscopic viewing. Settings were used to create a depth relief map, indicating the apparent three-dimensional structure of the scene. We found that binocular cues increased the magnitude of apparent depth, the reliability of settings across repeated measures, and the consistency of perceived depth across participants. These results show that binocular cues make an important contribution to the precise and accurate perception of depth in natural scenes that contain multiple pictorial cues.

Keywords: 3D vision; binocular disparity; binocular vision; depth perception; depth-cue combination; natural images; pictorial relief; stereopsis; virtual reality.

Figure 1

(a–c) The three scenes used, with the crosses marking the sampled locations for each of the three settings; (d) average gauge settings for one scene.

Figure 2

Example depth maps, averaged over participants, for two objects under monocular and binocular viewing.

Figure 3

(a–h) Depth values for each point under monocular and binocular viewing for each participant. The black line shows a slope of 1, and the solid red line shows the slope of the total least squares regression. Pearson’s correlation coefficient $\rho$ is given for each participant.