Foveated graphics is a promising approach to solving the bandwidth challenges of immersive virtual and augmented reality displays by exploiting the falloff in spatial acuity in the periphery of the visual field. However, the perceptual models used in these applications neglect the effects of higher-level cognitive processing, namely the allocation of visual attention, and are thus overestimating sensitivity in the periphery in many scenarios. Here, we introduce the first attention-aware model of contrast sensitivity. We conduct user studies to measure contrast sensitivity under different attention distributions and show that sensitivity in the periphery drops significantly when the user is required to allocate attention to the fovea. We motivate the development of future foveation models with another user study and demonstrate that tolerance for foveation in the periphery is significantly higher when the user is concentrating on a task in the fovea. Analysis of our model predicts potential bandwidth savings over 9 times higher than those afforded by current models. As such, our work forms the foundation for attention-aware foveated graphics techniques.

翻译：焦点渲染是一种有前景的方法，通过利用视野周边空间敏锐度的衰减，来解决沉浸式虚拟现实和增强现实显示中的带宽挑战。然而，这些应用中所使用的感知模型忽略了更高层次认知处理的影响，即视觉注意力的分配，因此在许多场景下高估了周边的敏感度。本文首次引入了一种考虑注意力的对比敏感度模型。我们通过用户研究测量了不同注意力分布下的对比敏感度，并表明当用户需要将注意力集中到中央凹时，周边的敏感度显著下降。我们通过另一项用户研究推动了未来焦点化模型的发展，并证明当用户专注于中央凹的任务时，周边对焦点化的容忍度显著提高。对模型的分析预测，其潜在带宽节省可达到当前模型的9倍以上。因此，我们的工作为注意力感知焦点图形技术奠定了基础。