Factors impacting quality of experience in stereoscopic images

The stereoscopic 3D industry has fallen short of achieving acceptable Quality of Experience (QoE) because of various technical limitations, such as excessive disparity, accommodation-convergence mismatch. This study investigates the effect of scene content, camera baseline, screen size and viewing location on stereoscopic QoE in a holistic approach. 240 typical test configurations are taken into account, in which a wide range of disparity constructed from the shooting conditions (scene content, camera baseline, sensor resolution/screen size) was selected from datasets, making the constructed disparities locate in different ranges of maximal disparity supported by viewing environment (viewing location). Second, an extensive subjective test is conducted using a single stimulus methodology, in which 15 samples at each viewing location were obtained. Finally, a statistical analysis is performed and the results reveal that scene content, camera baseline, as well as the interactions between screen size, scene content and camera baseline, have significant impact on QoE in stereoscopic images, while other factors, especially viewing location involved, have almost no significant impact. The generated Mean Opinion Scores (MOS) and the statistical results can be used to design stereoscopic quality metrics and validate their performance.