Color Constancy in Virtual Environments with Head-Mounted and Flat-Panel Displays Across Different Illuminants and Lightness Levels

Virtual reality (VR) is commonly used as a tool for enhancing immersion within virtual environments, with one of its primary goals being to approximate real-world perception as closely as possible. In everyday life, variations in lighting conditions significantly influence how colors are perceived across different times and settings. However, the human visual system compensates for these changes, maintaining relatively stable color perception; a phenomenon known as color constancy. This process is driven by chromatic adaptation, the visual system’s adjustment to changes in illumination. Despite the growing use of VR, little research has explored how color constancy operates in virtual environments viewed through a head-mounted display (HMD), particularly in comparison to conventional flat-panel displays. To address this gap, we conducted a psychophysical achromatic adjustment experiment to compare color constancy between VR and flat display conditions. We also examined the influence of secondary factors such as illuminant chromaticity and target lightness, testing five illuminants (white, red, green, blue, yellow) and three lightness levels (L* = 40, 55, 70). Our findings reveal that color constancy is significantly higher in VR than on flat displays across all tested conditions. We also observe significant differences in constancy between illuminants, with the green illuminant yielding the highest constancy and red the lowest. Additionally, higher target lightness levels led to lower constancy. By directly comparing VR to flat displays, our study offers evidence that perceptual measures like color constancy may serve as quantifiable indicators of immersion. This has important implications not only for refining theories of color constancy within virtual environments, but also for the development of more immersive virtual experiences.