Some observations on the effects of slant and texture type on slant-from-texture

Abstract

We measure the performance of five subjects in a two-alternative-forced-choice slant-discrimination task for differently textured planes. As textures we used uniform lattices, randomly displaced lattices, circles (polka dots), Voronoi tessellations, plaids, 1/f noise, "coherent" noise and a leopard skin-like texture. Our results show: (1) Improving performance with larger slants for all textures, (2) and some cases of "non-symmetrical" performance around a particular orientation. (3) For orientations sufficiently slanted, the different textures do not elicit major differences in performance, (4) while for orientations closer to the vertical plane there are marked differences among them. (5) These differences allow a rank-order of textures to be formed according to their "helpfulness"--that is, how easy the discrimination task is when a particular texture is mapped on the plane. Polka dots tend to allow the best slant discrimination performance, noise patterns the worst. Two additional experiments were conducted to test the generality of the obtained rank-order. First, the tilt of the planes was rotated by 90 degrees. Second, the task was changed to a slant report task via probe adjustment. The results of both control experiments confirmed the texture rank-order previously obtained. We then test a number of spatial-frequency-based slant-from-texture models and discuss their shortcomings in explaining our rank-order. Finally, we comment on the importance of these results for depth-perception research in general, and in particular the implications our results have for studies of cue combination (sensor fusion) using texture as one of the cues involved.

Aging and the perception of slant from optical texture, motion parallax, and binocular disparity

“…The variations in physical slant accounted for 63.2% of the total variance in the observers' judgments. Given that similar past research has shown significant underestimation (e.g., Gibson, 1950b;Rosas et al, 2004;Saunders, 2003), it is interesting that our observers did not exhibit underestimation. In contrast, our observers' judgments of slant were accurate for all three of the natural textures (marble, granite, and pebble tex- interaction for the older observers and no such interaction for the younger observers) was responsible for the observed age slant texture interaction.…”

“…The observers' judgments of slant in Experiment 1 (see Figure 3) were generally accurate: Our observers did not exhibit the underestimation that has been obtained in many previous studies (see, e.g., Andersen et al, 1998;Rosas et al, 2004;Saunders, 2003;Todd et al, 2005). Given that our surfaces were physically slanted in depth (instead of being simulated computationally and then displayed on a frontoparallel monitor or projection screen), it is possible that other monocular factors, such as accommodative blur (Ciuffreda, Wang, & Vasudevan, 2007;Frisby, Buckley, & Horsman, 1995;Watt, Akeley, Ernst, & Banks, 2005), contributed to the accurate performance of our observers in Experiment 1.…”

“…Past research on the perception of slant, conducted mostly with computer-generated texture patterns, has typically shown underestimation (e.g., Andersen et al, 1998;Gibson, 1950b;Newman et al, 1973;Rosas et al, 2004;Saunders, 2003;Todd et al, 2005). The observers in our Experiment 2 also exhibited underestimation when they judged the surface slants by using magnitude estimation (see Figure 8).…”

Texture and haptic cues in slant discrimination: reliability-based cue weighting without statistically optimal cue combination

“…In a recent paper Rosas et al 8 showed that different texture types elicit different performance in a slantdiscrimination task. This effect was observed by measuring the discrimination performance of the slant of a textured plane at different slant levels.…”

Extending the Life of Virtual Heritage: Reuse of TLS Point Clouds In Synthetic Stereoscopic Spherical Images

“…The amount of variation 'from point to point in the texture is directly related to the distance from the viewer' (Rosas et al, 2004). This cue will improve not only the depth perception but also the surface orientation in the case of surfaces slanted in depth.…”