Optimizing Object Placement
Object Placement is important when trying to get the most depth out of the display.
Object Placement is important when trying to get the most depth out of the display.
This scene setup has large empty spaces between objects on the depth axis - resulting in the need for a large Leia frustum, which will result in the objects in the scene becoming flattened on the depth axis like as shown on the image below.
This shows what the viewer will perceive objects to look like if you have a large low-baseline Leia frustum. Because a large amount of depth is compressed to fit within the safe disparity zone, objects are flattened to look like cardboard cutouts.
The more stretched out a scene is on the depth axis, the more that depth will have to be compressed to fit within the safe disparity zone. To avoid flattening out objects, eliminate large empty spaces between objects on the depth axis, and increase the Depth Scaling of the LeiaDisplay component such that the Leia frustum tightly encapsulates the scene.
This setup is suboptimal. Unused space behind the Leia Display plane forces depth to be squashed, and similarly to the previous slides will make objects look more like flat paper cut-outs rather than 3D models. It would provide a richer, fuller depth experience to increase the baseline and move the Leia Display plane such that the frustum more tightly encompasses the objects in the scene.
This setup will provide maximal possible comfortable depth. Seeing multiple objects at different depths spread across the Leia frustum maximizes parallax information and depth perception.
The Comfort Zone gizmo represents the safe disparity zone for rendering on the 3D display.
The Leia Display plane represents where the Leia Display is located in the virtual world. Objects will be rendered on the screen according to their position relative to this plane.
Objects closer to the camera than the Leia Display plane will appear to be popping out of the display, and objects further than the Leia Display plane will appear recessed into the display.
Objects in the regions marked as "Too close" or "Too far" may be too high disparity, causing them to appear as double images and be visually uncomfortable to viewers.
If you cannot fit all your content into the Comfort Zone, that's alright. We recommend using Unity's Post-Processing Effects Depth Of Field to assist smoothing content that reaches into areas outside the safe disparity zone. See how to implement that here: Depth of Field
To get the most depth in your app, we suggest the following guides.
Use the Leia Display's Depth Scaling to change the frustum so the near and far planes of the frustum closely capture all your objects
Ensure the Display distance sits on or close to your primary focus
In this example, the scene has been setup so that..
All content fits snug in the Comfort Zone bounds, maximizing depth
Objects we want to pop out of the screen are in front of the Display Distance plane
Objects we want to recess into the screen are behind the Display Distance plane
The main character pops outside the screen and the creatures recess inward. Great!
You may think 'Ahh, but if I lower the Depth Scaling value, I will easily fit all my content into the Comfort Zone.'
While yes, your content will easily fit in the Comfort Zone, you also reduce the amount of depth.
With the Depth Scaling reduced beyond necessity, the depth queues are diminished. Here is the result of the above settings. Note that depth is much less noticeable than the above example.
We recommend experimenting with the Depth Scaling and Display Distance to maximize your depth experience.
