Visual crowding reduces blur sensitivity in peripheral vision: a study using natural textures in virtual reality.

Peripheral vision plays a crucial role in extended reality by supporting immersion, navigation, and spatial awareness beyond the central field of view. However, it also presents perceptual differences compared to central vision, such as reduced visual acuity. One of the most significant challenges is visual crowding, where the presence of nearby elements disrupts the recognition of a peripheral target. While extensively studied in visual neuroscience, the practical implications of crowding for immersive image processing remain largely unexplored. This study investigates how crowding affects the perception of blur in natural textures within an extended reality environment. Participants were asked to detect blur in peripheral texture patches, presented in isolation or surrounded by similar textures. The results confirm that the presence of surrounding textures impairs blur sensitivity, with the strength of this effect depending on the properties of the textures. Specifically, crowding is more pronounced when the target and its surroundings are visually similar or when the central texture can be easily inferred from the surrounding content. By understanding how crowding happens in realistic scenes, this work opens perspectives for perceptually guided rendering and compression strategies in extended reality, where imperceptible degradations can be introduced without compromising visual quality.