Human Sensitivity to Light Zones in Virtual Scenes

Abstract

We investigated perception of light properties in scenes containing volumes with dramatically different light properties (direction, intensity, diffuseness). Each scene had two light zones, defined as distinct spatial groupings of lighting variables significant to the space- and form-giving characteristics of light [Mad07]. The results show that human observers are more sensitive to differences in illumination between two parts of a scene when the differences occur in the picture plane than in depth of the scene. We discuss implications for and possible applications of our results in computer graphics.