The Effects of Color on Depth Perception in Virtual Reality : A Case Study

Sammanfattning: Finding if color has an effect on depth perception in virtual reality (VR) is important, as it could be important for e.g. surgeons to perceive the depth correctly if they were to be trained in VR environments as a preparation for surgeries on real patients. If color has an effect on perceived depth in VR then producers of these simulations have to take their color choices into account when creating simulations. Previous research has shown that luminosity and hue can have effects on depth perception. It is also perceived that depth underestimation is prevalent in VR. Discerning if either the color of the focal object or the background is affecting the depth perception is important. Therefore finding what effect different color attributes of a focal object and background has on the depth perception in a VR environment is important. This experimental study examined this through a case study performed in a VR environment built in Unity. The tests were set up to emulate the piercing of a catheter into a plane, where the user pressed a button the moment the plane was pierced. To test different colors of the focal object, in this case a plane, the background was assigned neutral colors (white or black) and while testing the background the plane had a neutral color (white). Results from the study show that colors have a small effect, namely up to 13.2 mm error (for the yellow hue with high luminosity and high saturation), on users’ depth perception in VR. No single attribute was better than another but on the object, blue hue gave the largest error while red hue gave the smallest error. For the background, there was more variation on the data but green and blue hue gave the smallest errors and red and yellow the largest. In sum, color has differing effects on depth perception in VR depending on if the color is applied to a background or an object. Red color gave the most accurate depth perception when applied to the object. For color applied to the background, green hue with high luminosity and blue hue with low luminosity resulted in the most accurate depth perception.