Quantification of Contrast Sensitivity and Color Perception using Head-worn Augmented Reality Displays

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) displays often reduce the visual capabilities of the user. This reduction can be measured both objectively and through user studies. We acquired objective measurements with a color meter and conducted two user studies for each of two key measurements. First was the combined effect of resolution and display contrast, which equate to the visual acuity and apparent brightness. The combined effect may be captured by the contrast sensitivity function and measured through analogs of optometric exams. We expanded the number of commercial devices tested in previous studies, including higher resolution and video-overlay AR displays. We found patterns of reduced contrast sensitivity similar to previous work; however, we saw that all displays enabled users to achieve the maximum possible acuity with at least moderate levels of contrast. The second measurement was the perception of color. Objective measurements showed a distortion of color, notably in the blue region of color space. We devised a color matching task to quantify the distortion of color perception, finding that the displays themselves were poor at showing colors in the blue region of color space and that the perceptual distortion of such colors was even greater than the objective distortion. We noted significantly different distortions and variability between displays.

Legibility in Industrial AR: Text Style, Color Coding, and Illuminance

“…2 Furthermore, the experiments of Mark Livingston and his colleagues on HWDs, especially oHWDs, showed that dark colors on light backgrounds tended to disappear perceptually. 4 In terms of response time (see Figure 5), our experiment revealed that the mandatory color should be assigned to the billboard and the text color should be the white. It is not by chance that this style is commonly used in industrial printed signage-especially white text on a blue, red, or green background, the same colors used in this research.…”

“…4 The authors enumerate disadvantages of vHWDs including low resolution of reality, limited field of view, delay between movements of head and visual signal perceived, and user disorientation related to parallax caused by the spatial offset between camera position and true eye location. Like the parallax problem, biocular displays (where both eyes see the same image) cause significantly more discomfort than monocular or binocular displays (stereoscopic vision), both in eyestrain and fatigue.…”

Visual Interface Evaluation for Wearables Datasets: Predicting the Subjective Augmented Vision Image QoE and QoS

“…As operator performance augmentation is typically the goal behind AR content display, evaluations such as in [20][21][22] showcase issues for the various system types. Perceptual issues for these content presentation approaches have been evaluated in the past, as well, such as for item segmentation [23], depth perception [24], contrast and color perception [25] or the field-of-view [26]. In our own prior research, we investigated the differences between the traditional opaque and transparent augmented reality scenarios for media presentation [27].…”

Text Readability in Head-Worn Displays: Color and Style Optimization in Video versus Optical See-Through Devices

“…For OST devices, particular attention should be paid when using color codes, because colors are differently saturated depending on backgrounds, even if still perceived as their original hues as revealed by Gabbard et al [4]. Furthermore Livingston's experiments on HWDs [28], [29], especially OST ones, showed that dark color tended to disappear perceptually with light backgrounds.…”