The geometry of the vergence-accommodation conflict in mixed reality systems

Mixed reality technologies, such as virtual (VR) and augmented (AR) reality, present promising opportunities to advance education and professional training due to their adaptability to diverse contexts. Distortions in the perceived distance in such mediated conditions, however, are well documented and have imposed nontrivial challenges that complicate and limit transferring task performance in a virtual setting to the unmediated reality (UR). One potential source of the distance distortion is the vergence-accommodation conflict—the discrepancy between the depth specified by the eyes’ accommodative state and the angle at which the eyes converge to fixate on a target. The present study involved the use of a manual pointing task in UR, VR, and AR to quantify the magnitude of the potential depth distortion in each modality. Conceptualizing the effect of vergence-accommodation offset as a constant offset to the vergence angle, a model was developed based on the stereoscopic viewing geometry. Different versions of the model were used to fit and predict the behavioral data for all modalities. Results confirmed the validity of the conceptualization of vergence-accommodation as a device-specific vergence offset, which predicted up to 66% of the variance in the data. The fitted parameters indicate that, due to the vergence-accommodation conflict, participants’ vergence angle was driven outwards by approximately 0.2°, which disrupted the stereoscopic viewing geometry and produced distance distortion in VR and AR. The implications of this finding are discussed in the context of developing virtual environments that minimize the effect of depth distortion.