Interactive color perspective for 3D graphics applications: Enhancing depth perception and the understanding of object relations

Abstract

Perceiving depth and spatial relations between objects in virtual environments is challenging and can be facilitated by the rendering process in 3D graphics applications. Often the perspective projection is not sufficient to visualize all necessary information because the projected image can lead to position and orientation ambiguity. Therefore, additional indicators are needed to improve the visualization of information about spatial relationships and the structure of the scene. For this purpose, we introduce a toolbox that applies color as an interactive design tool. Within this toolbox, six algorithms can be used to dynamically modulate the coloring of single objects or the scene as a whole. For evaluation, we report a study that tested whether object coloring as implemented in the toolbox can change apparent depth. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.