Time Sequential Motion-to-Photon Latency Measurement System for Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Displays

• Main Authors: Song-Woo Choi, Siyeong Lee, Min-Woo Seo, Suk-Ju Kang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-09-01
• Series: Electronics
• Subjects: head-mounted display; virtual reality; motion-to-photon latency
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/7/9/171

Because the interest in virtual reality (VR) has increased recently, studies on head-mounted displays (HMDs) have been actively conducted. However, HMD causes motion sickness and dizziness to the user, who is most affected by motion-to-photon latency. Therefore, equipment for measuring and quantifying this occurrence is very necessary. This paper proposes a novel system to measure and visualize the time sequential motion-to-photon latency in real time for HMDs. Conventional motion-to-photon latency measurement methods can measure the latency only at the beginning of the physical motion. On the other hand, the proposed method can measure the latency in real time at every input time. Specifically, it generates the rotation data with intensity levels of pixels on the measurement area, and it can obtain the motion-to-photon latency data in all temporal ranges. Concurrently, encoders measure the actual motion from a motion generator designed to control the actual posture of the HMD device. The proposed system conducts a comparison between two motions from encoders and the output image on a display. Finally, it calculates the motion-to-photon latency for all time points. The experiment shows that the latency increases from a minimum of 46.55 ms to a maximum of 154.63 ms according to the workload levels.