Immersive and interactive subjective quality assessment of dynamic volumetric meshes

Dynamic point cloud delivery can provide the required interactivity and realism to six degrees of freedom (6DoF) interactive applications. However, dynamic point cloud rendering imposes stringent requirements (e.g., frames per second (FPS) and quality) that current hardware cannot handle. A possible solution is to convert point cloud into meshes before rendering on the head-mounted display (HMD). However, this conversion can induce degradation in quality perception such as a change in depth, level of detail, or presence of artifacts. This paper, as one of the first, presents an extensive subjective study of the effects of converting point cloud to meshes with different quality representations. In addition, we provide a novel in-session content rating methodology, providing a more accurate assessment as well as avoiding post-study bias. Our study shows that both compression level and observation distance have their influence on subjective perception. However, the degree of influence is heavily entangled with the content and geometry at hand. Furthermore, we also noticed that while end users are clearly aware of quality switches, the influence on their quality perception is limited. As a result, this has the potential to open up possibilities in bringing the adaptive video streaming paradigm to the 6DoF environment.