Online gaming is one of the most popular services via Wi-Fi at home, requiring stable, low latency to ensure responsive gameplay. Although recent versions of Wi-Fi offer maximum theoretical bitrates up to 9.6 Gbps, far exceeding throughput requirements for online games, players still experience frustrating moments due to poor Wi-Fi connections during the game. Among other challenges, Wi-Fi is particularly sensitive to its radio environment due to its unlicensed spectrum. In addition to interferences from neighboring Wi-Fi networks in crowded areas, other radio technologies such as Bluetooth, Thread and microwave ovens that share the same frequency as Wi-Fi can also have non-desirable effect for Wi-Fi services. In this paper, we focus on how Wi-Fi coverage and neighboring interference can impact the gaming experience of a well-known multiplayer online game, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. We conducted gaming experiments and collected metrics from a Wi-Fi access point and gaming device in a controlled and automated Wi-Fi testbed with different attenuation values and available airtime on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands. Our analysis identifies strong correlations between in-game latency and specific WiFi metrics for each frequency band. This study helps better understand the impact of Wi-Fi quality on in-game latency, and could guide Internet Service Providers and telecommunication operators on diagnostics and future network design.

Differentiating objects, people, and animals from their surroundings is a key visual function, referred to as figure-ground segregation. Psychological research has established that humans use diverse visual features such as shape, texture, motion, and distance to identify figures. However, our understanding of the neural computations supporting figure-ground segregation remains incomplete. Recent neurophysiological observations in cortical area MT of primates - a region important for motion and depth processing - suggest that neurons in this area favor visual features that intuitively map onto figures, such as faster motion and closer distances. Inspired by these new observations, here we test the hypothesis that figures in natural scenes contain statistical regularities in motion and distance detectable at the scale of neuronal receptive fields. We combined statistical measurements of motion and distance from natural scenes with figure-ground annotations and simulations of receptive field inputs. Within simulated receptive fields, inputs corresponding to figures tended to move faster and more coherently, and tended to be nearer in distance, than the surrounding area. Our simulation predicts that the statistical regularities associated with figure motion increase notably with retinal eccentricity, while the distance statistics do not. Lastly, we implemented a simple neural population model illustrating how MT response properties, in combination with these statistics, can favor the representation of visual features associated with figures. These results enrich our understanding of the computations supporting figure-ground segregation, provide a normative account for recent neurophysiological observations, and contribute to converging lines of evidence that the brain exploits natural statistics to prioritize behaviorally-relevant information.

Augmented reality (AR) devices seek to create compelling visual experiences that merge virtual imagery with the natural world. These devices often rely on wearable near-eye display systems that can optically overlay digital images to the left and right eyes of the user separately. Ideally, the two eyes should be shown images with minimal radiometric differences (e.g., the same overall luminance, contrast, and color in both eyes), but achieving this binocular equality can be challenging in wearable systems with stringent demands on weight and size. Basic vision research has shown that a spectrum of potentially detrimental perceptual effects can be elicited by imagery with radiometric differences between the eyes, but it is not clear whether and how these findings apply to the experience of modern AR devices. In this work, we first develop a testing paradigm for assessing multiple aspects of visual appearance at once, and characterize five key perceptual factors when participants viewed stimuli with interocular contrast differences. In a second experiment, we simulate optical see-through AR imagery using conventional desktop LCD monitors and use the same paradigm to evaluate the multi-faceted perceptual implications when the AR display luminance differs between the two eyes. We also include simulations of monocular AR systems (i.e., systems in which only one eye sees the displayed image). Our results suggest that interocular contrast differences can drive several potentially detrimental perceptual effects in binocular AR systems, such as binocular luster, rivalry, and spurious depth differences. In addition, monocular AR displays tend to have more artifacts than binocular displays with a large contrast difference in the two eyes. A better understanding of the range and likelihood of these perceptual phenomena can help inform design choices that support high-quality user experiences in AR.

Near-eye display systems for augmented reality (AR) aim to seamlessly merge virtual content with the user’s view of the real-world. A substantial limitation of current systems is that they only present virtual content over a limited portion of the user’s natural field of view (FOV). This limitation reduces the immersion and utility of these systems. Thus, it is essential to quantify FOV coverage in AR systems and understand how to maximize it. It is straightforward to determine the FOV coverage for monocular AR systems based on the system architecture. However, stereoscopic AR systems that present 3D virtual content create a more complicated scenario because the two eyes’ views do not always completely overlap. The introduction of partial binocular overlap in stereoscopic systems can potentially expand the perceived horizontal FOV coverage, but it can also introduce perceptual nonuniformity artifacts. In this arrticle, we first review the principles of binocular FOV overlap for natural vision and for stereoscopic display systems. We report the results of a set of perceptual studies that examine how different amounts and types of horizontal binocular overlap in stereoscopic AR systems influence the perception of nonuniformity across the FOV. We then describe how to quantify the horizontal FOV in stereoscopic AR when taking 3D content into account. We show that all stereoscopic AR systems result in a variable horizontal FOV coverage and variable amounts of binocular overlap depending on fixation distance. Taken together, these results provide a framework for optimizing perceived FOV coverage and minimizing perceptual artifacts in stereoscopic AR systems for different use cases.

, selectively emphasize contrast differently in the two eyes' views. The visual system integrates these contrast differences into a unified percept, which is theorized to contain more contrast overall than each eye's view on its own. As stereoscopic displays become increasingly common for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), dichoptic tone mapping is an appealing technique for imaging pipelines. We sought to examine whether a standard photographic technique, exposure bracketing, could be modified to enhance contrast similarly to dichoptic tone mapping. While assessing the efficacy of this technique with user studies, we also re-evaluated existing dichoptic tone mapping methods. Across several user studies; however, we did not find evidence that either dichoptic tone mapping or dichoptic exposures consistently increased subjective image preferences. We also did not observe improvements in subjective or objective measures of detail visibility. We did find evidence that dichoptic methods enhanced subjective 3D impressions. Here, we present these results and evaluate the potential contributions and current limitations of dichoptic methods for applications in stereoscopic displays.