HCC:Small: A New Method for Evaluating Perceptual Fidelity in Computer Graphics

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For many applications of computer graphics, it is important that viewers perceive an accurate sense of the scale and spatial layout depicted in the displayed imagery. Medical and scientific visualizations need to accurately convey information about the size, shape, and location of entities of potential interest. Architectural and educational systems should give the user an overall sense of the scale of a real or hypothesized environment, along with the arrangement of objects in that space. Simulation and training systems need to allow users to perform tasks with the same or similar facility as in the real world. Despite the importance of achieving a high level of perceptual fidelity in computer graphics, there are as yet no established methodologies for evaluating how well computer graphics imagery conveys spatial information to a viewer. The lack of such methodologies is a significant impediment to creating more effective computer graphics systems, particularly for non-entertainment applications. In this multidisciplinary project involving genuine collaboration between computer scientists and cognitive psychologists, the PI and his team will develop a method for quantifying perceptual fidelity that is both generalizable and task-relevant. This work will be the first systematic use of the concept of perceived affordances, defined as the perception of one's own action capabilities, for characterizing the accuracy of space perception in computer graphics. The methodology involves a verbal indication that a particular action can or cannot be performed in a viewed environment. By varying the spatial structure of the environment, these affordance judgments can be used to probe how accurately viewers are able to perceive action-relevant spatial information. The result is a measure relevant to action, less subject to bias than verbal reports of more primitive properties such as size or distance, and applicable to non-virtual-environment display systems in which the actual action cannot be performed. Broader Impacts: This research will lead to a methodology that significantly impacts displays and rendering methods not yet developed, and will result in qualitative improvements in domain-specific systems that go beyond current practice. Project outcomes will be applicable across a broad range of display technologies and rendering techniques, and will reduce the confounds associated with training and prior experience found in more specialized task performance measures. The nature of this collaboration will lead to an exceptional educational environment, from which students will come away with a depth and breadth of experience which makes them especially well qualified to tackle demanding problems in science and engineering. The investigators have a well established record of involving undergraduates and women in research, and will continue that tradition with this work.