Perceiving layered information on 3D displays using binocular disparity

stuttgart.de 3D displays are hitting the mass market. They are integrated in consumer TVs, notebooks, and mobile phones and are mainly used for virtual reality as well as video content. We see large potential in using depth also for structuring information. Our specific use case is 3D displays integrated in cars. The capabilities of such dis-plays could be used to present relevant information to the driver in a fast and easy-to-understand way, e.g., by functionality-based clus-tering. However, excessive parallaxes can cause discomfort and in turn negatively influence the primary driving task. This requires a reasonable choice of parallax boundaries. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we identify the comfort zone when perceiv-ing 3D content. Second, we determine a minimum depth distance between objects that still enables users to quickly and accurately separate the two depth planes. The results yield that in terms of task completion time the optimum distance from screen level is up to 35.9 arc-min angular disparity behind the screen plane. A dis-tance of at least 2.7 arc-min difference in angular disparity between the objects significantly decreases time for layer separation. Based on the results we derive design implications