Bridging human perception and virtual reality: Toward a vision-oriented framework for immersive displays

Visual clarity in virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays and video see-through (VST) systems is often described through hardware-oriented specifications, including panel resolution, pixels per degree (PPD), and consumer labels such as “4 K” or “8 K.” Although these descriptors are useful entry points, they provide only a partial account of what users actually perceive. Perceived detail is shaped by the combined effects of rendering configuration, runtime processing, optical transfer, VST capture and image processing, human visual limits, and task demands. This scoping-informed conceptual review reframes VR/VST display assessment as an end-to-end perception problem rather than a comparison of isolated device specifications. It draws on 83 full-text review sources and includes a separate OpenAlex metadata analysis of 8253 screened records from 2016–2025 using titles, abstracts, and related metadata. The review translates this evidence into a five-stage perception pipeline and a claim-support taxonomy that matches evidence classes and evaluation methods to the claims they can support. It argues that PPD and similar values should be treated as conditional evidence rather than universal indicators, requiring information about viewing geometry, optical transfer, runtime state, observer vision, and task demands. The paper concludes with an evaluation and reporting workflow to support clearer documentation, more comparable studies, and more human-centered communication of immersive display performance.