Depth Perception Evaluation with Different Stereoscopic Techniques: A Case Study

Stereoscopy techniques such as anaglyph, shutter glasses and polarized glasses are used as resources to offer a sense of immersion in three-dimensional virtual environments. These techniques use different mechanisms to cause depth perception in the human brain when observing a scene or image. Although there are many virtual reality studies that employ such techniques, little has been done to measure the effectiveness of different approaches. This article evaluates the depth effect realized by volunteers when using three different stereoscopy techniques in a three-dimensional virtual environment and provides an analysis of variance with ANOVA. An experiment conducted with volunteers showed that there is no significant statistical differences among the three techniques used, and it provided evidences that it is possible to build low-cost immersive applications when the main goal is provide depth sense.