[hbosch]

I believe it's when an object is so far in the distance that it doesn't require stereo rendering, just render it once.

[mrfusion]

What about the parallax effect though? Edit. I guess it would only apply in cases where there is nothing in the foreground?

[pzone]

The idea is that the parallax of two objects that are say 200 meters and 250 meters in the distance is negligible and can be ignored as long as you get the parallax correct for nearby objects.

You might have to set your nearfield scale based on the contents of the scene. It wouldn't work if there were say, some buildings at 200 meters and then mountains a kilometer away. But if you're in a cathedral with some chandeliers high up on the ceiling, cheating to remove the parallax of the chandeliers will not detract from the VR effect.

[pmarreck]

Former Psych major with a focus on perception here.

Your stereoscopic vision is good/useful only out to about 30 meters. Beyond that it's really diminishing returns.

[microcolonel]

They translate the renderbuffer for the other eye. It's far enough that the objects in the far pass don't have any significant parallax.