The traditional way of stereoscopic rendering requires rendering the scene for left and right eyes separately; which doubles the rendering complexity. In this study, we propose a perceptually-based approach for accelerating stereoscopic rendering. This optimization approach is based on the Binocular Suppression Theory, which claims that the overall percept of a stereo pair in a region is determined by the dominant image on the corresponding region. We investigate how binocular suppression mechanism of human visual system can be utilized for rendering optimization. Our aim is to identify the graphics rendering and modeling features that do not affect the overall quality of a stereo pair when simplified in one view. By combining the results of this investigation with the principles of visual attention, we infer that this optimization approach is feasible if the high quality view has more intensity contrast. For this reason, we performed a subjective experiment, in which various representative graphical methods were analyzed. The experimental results verified our hypothesis that a modification, applied on a single view, is not perceptible if it decreases the intensity contrast, and thus can be used for stereoscopic rendering. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.