Depth map quantization - how much is sufficient?

With the recent advancement in visualization devices over the last years, we are seeing a growing market for stereoscopic content. In order to synthesize 3D content, one needs to have either a stereo pair or an image and a depth map. Computing depth maps for images is a highly computationally intensive and time-consuming process. In this paper, we describe results of an experimental evaluation of depth map data redundancy in stereoscopic images. In the experiments with computer generated images, several observers visually tested the number of quantization levels required for comfortable and quantization unaffected stereoscopic vision. The experiments show that the number of depth quantization levels can be as low as only a couple of tens. This may have profound implication on the process of depth map estimation and 3D synthesis.