Luminance calibration of virtual reality displays in Unity

Virtual reality (VR) displays are an increasingly popular medium for experiments on visual perception. This presents the challenge of showing precisely controlled stimuli on devices that were not primarily designed for research. Here we describe methods for controlling stimulus luminance in VR experiments created in Unity using the Built-in Render Pipeline. We discuss the Gamma/Linear setting, measuring luminance in a VR headset, and using color grading in Unity’s Post-Processing Stack to make stimulus luminance proportional to achromatic RGB value. We provide MATLAB code that uses luminance measurements from a VR headset to generate the lookup table that Unity requires for linearizing luminance. We emphasize that when creating experiments in this complex environment, it is important to experiment with the rendering process to confirm that stimuli are displayed as expected. We show results of several such tests and provide code as a starting point for readers who wish to run further tests related to their own research.