The computation of texture and of stereoscopic depth is limited by a number of factors in the design of the optical front-end and subsequent processing stages in humans and machines. A number of limiting factors in the human visual system, such as resolution of the optics and opto-electronic interface, contrast, luminance, temporal resolution and eccentricity are reviewed and evaluated concerning their relevance for the recognition of texture and stereoscopic depth. The algorithms used by the human brain to discriminate between textures and to compute stereoscopic depth are very fast and efficient. Their study might be beneficial for the development of better algorithms in machine vision.