Virtual reality has reached a great maturity in recent years. However, the quality of its visual appearance still leaves room for improvement. One of the most difficult features to represent in real-time 3D rendered virtual scenes is color fidelity, since there are many factors influencing the faithful reproduction of color. In this paper we introduce a method for improving color fidelity in virtual reality systems based in real-time 3D rendering systems. We developed a color management system for 3D rendered scenes divided into two levels. At the first level, color management is applied only to light sources defined inside the virtual scene. At the second level, we applied spectral techniques over the hyperspectral textures of 3D objects to obtain a higher degree of color fidelity. To illustrate the application of this color management method, we simulated a virtual version of the Ishihara test for color blindness deficiency detection.

In recent years, there have been very important advances in graphic computing and technology related to the capture and representation of real objects in both 2 and 3 dimensions. One of these technologies is virtual reality, which can be incorporated into common tasks in research laboratories, especially in laboratories related to color vision and lighting research. To incorporate virtual reality devices into research tasks, newly developed applications must be validated with existing and known tests or techniques. The objective of this work was to study the validity of a commercial VR system for research and diagnosis in color vision. We carried out a comparative study on the behavior of these immersive systems for viewing 3D scenes in real time using a color vision test. In particular, we implemented a virtual version of the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 Hue test and compared the results obtained by 17 normal and 3 defective observers in both the physical and virtual tests. The results show that the functionality of both tests is very similar and that the diagnosis of both methods is equivalent. Detailed analysis of the results of both tests indicates that there is a slight difference in scale between the two tests. This difference in scale indicates a greater difficulty in the case of the virtual test but does not affect the final diagnosis. This could be due to the greater difficulty in using a head-mounted display (HMD).

In virtual reality technology, it is necessary to develop improvements and apply new techniques that allow rapid progress and innovative development. Nowadays, virtual reality devices have not yet demonstrated the great potential they could develop in the future. One main reason for this is the lack of precision to represent three-dimensional scenarios with a similar solvency to what our visual system obtains from the real world. One of the main problems is the representation of images using the RGB color system. This digital colorimetry system has many limitations when it comes to representing faithful images. In this work we propose to develop a virtual reality environment incorporating hyperspectral textures into a virtual reality system. Based on these hyperspectral textures, the aim of our scientific contribution is to improve the fidelity of the chromatic representation, especially when the lighting conditions of the scenes and its precision are relevant. Therefore, we will present the steps followed to render three-dimensional objects with hyperspectral textures within a virtual reality scenario. Additionally, we will check the results obtained by applying such hyperspectral textures by calculating the chromaticity coordinates of known samples.

Fast track article for IS&T International Symposium on Electronic Imaging 2020: Color Imaging: Displaying, Processing, Hardcopy, and Applications proceedings.