From Far and Near: Perceptual Evaluation of Crowd Representations Across Levels of Detail

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate how users perceive the visual quality of crowd character representations at different levels of detail (LoD) and viewing distances. Each representation: geometric meshes, image-based impostors, Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs), and 3D Gaussians, exhibits distinct trade-offs between visual fidelity and computational performance. Our qualitative and quantitative results provide insights to guide the design of perceptually optimized LoD strategies for crowd rendering.