5 - The Physiology of Human Vision

Summary

We will see in this chapter that the apparent perfection of our vision is mostly an illusion because neural structures are filling in plausible details to generate a coherent picture in our heads that is consistent with our life experiences. When building VR technology that co-opts these processes, it important to understand how they work. They were designed to do more with less, and fooling these processes with VR produces many unexpected side effects because the display technology is not a perfect replica of the surrounding world. Section 5.1 discusses the anatomy of the human eye within the optical system. Most of the section is about photoreceptors, which are the “input pixels“ that get paired with the “output pixels” of a digital display for VR. Section 5.2 offers a taste of neuroscience by explaining what is known about the visual information that hierarchically propagates from the photoreceptors up to the visual cortex. Section 5.3 explains how our eyes move, which incessantly interferes with the images in our retinas. Section 5.4 concludes the chapter by applying the knowledge gained about visual physiology to determine VR display requirements, such as the screen resolution.