Techniques are described for improving the measurement of visual perception of graphical user interface (GUI) information remoted to client devices in virtual desktop environments, such as VDI and DAAS. An objective image quality measurement of remoted virtual desktop interfaces is computed, that is more accurate and more closely aligned with subjective user perception. The visual quality metric is computed using a linear fusion model that combines a peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) score of the distorted image, a structural similarity (SSIM) score of the distorted image and a feature similarity (FSIM) score of the distorted image. Prior to using the model to compute the quantitative visual perception metric, the linear fusion model is trained by using a benchmark test database of reference images (e.g., virtual desktop interface images), distorted versions of those images and subjective human visual perception quality ratings associated with each distorted version.