An observer moving in a natural environment is usually able to separate the constant changes of his retinal images in such a way that he perceives the environment and the changes of his observation point independently. The necessary and sufficient conditions to perceive a stable environment in spite of the retinal change produced by self-motion are, however, as yet unknown. We found that under certain conditions a scene that changes during observer motion can appear more stable than a rigid one. In our experiment a scene consisting of a number of LEDs distributed in a dark room was visible through a window. A mechanical device controlled by a head-tracker was used to move the LEDs during head motion to either reduce or enhance motion parallax by a predefined gain factor. The subjects rated the scene with respect to different attributes including apparent deformation and degree of motion perceived. They were also asked to adjust the parallax gain to the value of greatest apparent stability of the scene. Monocular as well as binocular trials were conducted and different fixation points were employed. The result was a general tendency in all conditions to perceive scene motion when the scene was in fact rigid and to perceive the greatest stability when the scene was distorted in such a way as to produce reduced motion parallax.
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