Perceptually Calibrated Foveated Chroma Attenuation for Gaze-Contingent VR Displays

This paper presents a perceptually calibrated foveated chroma attenuation framework for gaze-contingent virtual reality displays that exploits the reduced color sensitivity of peripheral vision. The method preserves full chroma in the foveal region while progressively attenuating blue-yellow and red-green chroma components with increasing retinal eccentricity. Chroma modulation is performed in YCbCr color space using separate eccentricity-dependent attenuation functions for the Cb and Cr channels while maintaining full-resolution luminance across the visual field. Through expert evaluation and two pilot user studies, the authors identify perceptually acceptable attenuation ranges of Zcb = 0.70–0.85 for the blue-yellow channel and Zcr = 0.35–0.55 for the red-green channel, indicating stronger tolerance for red-green degradation in the visual periphery. The calibrated model achieves an estimated chroma bandwidth reduction of 31–37% without noticeable degradation in visual comfort or user experience. The results demonstrate the potential of perception-driven color rendering to reduce rendering, transmission, and display costs in future VR systems.