Open AccessLow-contrast Acuity Under Strong Luminance Dynamics and Potential Benefits of Divisive Display Augmented Reality
Author(s) -
Chou P. Hung,
Chloe Callahan-Flintoft,
Paul D. Fedele,
Kim F. Fluitt,
Barry D. Vaughan,
Anthony J. Walker,
Min Wei
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of perceptual imaging
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2575-8144
DOI - 10.2352/j.percept.imaging.2020.3.3.030501
Subject(s) - luminance , contrast (vision) , salience (neuroscience) , computer vision , artificial intelligence , saccade , computer science , visual acuity , optics , eye movement , physics
Understanding and predicting outdoor visual performance in augmented reality (AR) requires characterizing and modeling vision under strong luminance dynamics, including luminance differences of 10000-to-1 in a single image (high dynamic range, HDR). Classic models of vision, based on displays with 100-to-1 luminance contrast, have limited ability to generalize to HDR environments. An important question is whether low-contrast visibility, potentially useful for titrating saliency for AR applications, is resilient to saccade-induced strong luminance dynamics. The authors developed an HDR display system with up to 100,000-to-1 contrast and assessed how strong luminance dynamics affect low-contrast visual acuity. They show that, immediately following flashes of 25× or 100× luminance, visual acuity is unaffected at 90% letter Weber contrast and only minimally affected at lower letter contrasts (up to +0.20 LogMAR for 10% contrast). The resilience of low-contrast acuity across luminance changes opens up research on divisive display AR (ddAR) to effectively titrate salience under naturalistic HDR luminance.