Since bandwidth is getting cheaper and more available won the need for foveated imaging disappear soon?
One can ask exactly the same question about any form of image compression, yet no one questions the general need for better image compression techniques. The reason is simply that users always want bigger, higher quality images and higher frame rates, and bandwidth always costs something. Thus, it will always be a benefit to have better compression. As the available bandwidth increases user demand for higher resolution and/or higher frame rates will increase. In fact, foveated imaging becomes more and more useful (bigger compression ratios) as the image size and resolution increase. Right now, foveated imaging would be particularly useful for teleconferencing, surveillance or telenavigation, using point-to-point POTS, ISDN, or wireless, as well as basic internet communications. It can easily increase compression by a factor of 3-5 for image sizes in the range of 320 x 240 to 640 x 480. Our conclusion is that foveated imaging would be useful far into the future.
