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Optical see-through Augmented Reality (OST-AR) is a developing technology with exciting applications including medicine, industry, education, and entertainment. OST-AR creates a mix of virtual and real using an optical combiner that blends images and graphics with the real-world environment. Such an overlay of visual information is simultaneously futuristic and familiar: like the sci-fi navigation and communication interfaces in movies, but also much like banal reflections in glass windows. OSTAR’s transparent displays cause background bleed-through, which distorts color and contrast, yet virtual content is usually easily understandable. Perceptual scission, or the cognitive separation of layers, is an important mechanism, influenced by transparency, depth, parallax, and more, that helps us see what is real and what is virtual. In examples from Pepper’s Ghost, veiling luminance, mixed material modes, window shopping, and today’s OST-AR systems, transparency and scission provide surprising – and ordinary – results. Ongoing psychophysical research is addressing perceived characteristics of color, material, and images in OST-AR, testing and harnessing the perceptual effects of transparency and scission. Results help both understand the visual mechanisms and improve tomorrow’s AR systems.
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This content will become publicly available on February 2, 2026
From Polaroid to augmented reality: The enduring advantages of white borders
Ubiquitous throughout the history of photography, white borders on photo prints and vintage Polaroids remain useful as new technologies including augmented reality emerge for general use. In contemporary optical see-through augmented reality (OST-AR) displays, physical transparency limits the visibility of dark stimuli. However, recent research shows that simple image manipulations, white borders and outer glows, have a strong visual effect, making dark objects appear darker and more opaque. In this work, the practical value of known, inter-related effects including lightness induction, glare illusion, Cornsweet illusion, and simultaneous contrast are explored. The results show promising improvements to visibility and visual quality in future OST-AR interfaces.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1942755
- PAR ID:
- 10615892
- Publisher / Repository:
- Society for Imaging Science and Technology
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Electronic Imaging
- Volume:
- 37
- Issue:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 2470-1173
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 195-1 to 195-6
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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null (Ed.)Due to the additive light model employed by most optical see-through head-mounted displays (OST-HMDs), they provide the best augmented reality (AR) views in dark environments, where the added AR light does not have to compete against existing real-world lighting. AR imagery displayed on such devices loses a significant amount of contrast in well-lit environments such as outdoors in direct sunlight. To compensate for this, OST-HMDs often use a tinted visor to reduce the amount of environment light that reaches the user’s eyes, which in turn results in a loss of contrast in the user’s physical environment. While these effects are well known and grounded in existing literature, formal measurements of the illuminance and contrast of modern OST-HMDs are currently missing. In this paper, we provide illuminance measurements for both the Microsoft HoloLens 1 and its successor the HoloLens 2 under varying environment lighting conditions ranging from 0 to 20,000 lux. We evaluate how environment lighting impacts the user by calculating contrast ratios between rendered black (transparent) and white imagery displayed under these conditions, and evaluate how the intensity of environment lighting is impacted by donning and using the HMD. Our results indicate the further need for refinement in the design of future OST-HMDs to optimize contrast in environments with illuminance values greater than or equal to those found in indoor working environments.more » « less
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