Perceptie van kleur in virtuele omgevingen

Understanding and predicting the perception and appearance of light and color in realistic scenes is one of the ultimate goals of color science. Today's fundamental research on color appearance and color perception is typically based on simplified stimuli and viewing conditions: a flat, uniform stimuli on a neutral flat uniform background illuminated by a single (quasi)neutral light source. However, more complex, naturalistic stimuli that are more difficult to systematically generate and control might provide cues to and activate certain processes in the human visual and cognitive system that might remain quasi-silent using artificial simple stimuli. Advances in virtual reality provide the opportunity to use highly realistic stimuli in an unprecedentedly controlled way, making it a promising innovative, efficient and economical research tool with potentially groundbreaking consequences for the study, understanding and prediction of perception of realistic scenes. However, current knowledge and understanding of how (well) color perception in virtual reality corresponds to that in actual reality is limited. This project will therefore experimentally characterize and compare major, not yet fully understood, aspects of color perception (chromatic adaptation, simultaneous contrast and spatial effects) in actual and virtual reality: to 1) deepen our understanding of these fundamental processes and 2) establish mathematical methods to predict perception in real and virtual environments. Data that will be collected are observer responses (written, verbal, task,etc) to visual stimuli and the optical (spectral & colorimetric) measurements of the latter. Additional data needed for further analysis and modelling of individual variability of color perception, such as observer gender, age, colour deficiency, etc will also be collected.