Vergence and accommodation to multiple-image-plane stereoscopic displays: 'Real world' responses with practical image-plane separations?

Conventional stereoscopic displays present images on a single focal plane. The resulting mismatch between the stimuli to the eyes' focusing response (accommodation) and to convergence causes fatigue and poor stereo performance. One promising solution is to distribute image intensity across a number of relatively widely spaced image planes - a technique referred to as depth filtering. Previously, we found this elicits accurate, continuous monocular accommodation responses with image-plane separations as large as 1.1 Diopters, suggesting that a relatively small (i.e. practical) number of image planes is sufficient to eliminate vergence-accommodation conflicts over a large range of simulated distances. However, accommodation responses have been found to overshoot systematically when the same stimuli are viewed binocularly. Here, we examined the minimum image-plane spacing required for accurate accommodation to binocular depth-filtered images. We compared accommodation and vergence responses to step changes in depth for depth-filtered stimuli, using image-plane separations of 0.6-1.2 D, and equivalent real stimuli. Accommodation responses to real and depth-filtered stimuli were equivalent for image-plane separations of ~0.6-0.9 D, but inaccurate thereafter. We conclude that depth filtering can be used to precisely match accommodation and vergence demand in a practical stereoscopic display, using a relatively small number of image planes.