Indoor vs.

Outdoor Depth Perception for

Mobile Augmented Reality
Mark A. Livingston1, Zhuming Ai1, J. Edward Swan II2, Harvey S. Smallman3

1Naval Research Laboratory

2Mississippi State University

3Pacific Science & Engineering

Depth Perception in AR
• Typical VE depth perception is compressed
• AR depth perception has been observed to be:
– Overestimated at short distances [Rolland95]
– Underestimated from occluded locations at short distances [Ellis88]
– Underestimated at medium distances; overestimated at far [Swan06]
– Underestimated at medium distances with many protocols [Swan07]
• Real depth perception has been observed to be:
– Similar to AR depth perception [Livingston05]
– Unaffected by indoor/outdoor environment change
[Lappin06,Bodenheimer07]

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Goals for Current Experiment

1. Compare indoor and outdoor AR depth perception

at medium- and far-field distances
2. Determine whether strong linear perspective cues
of indoor environment could be replicated to
improve outdoor performance
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User Study Design
Target
• Task: match the depth of
virtual target to a real
referent
– Use “infinite” trackball to
control depth
• Twelve subjects
– Eight men, four women
– Age { 22 – 51 }; mean=35.6 Red
– All passed stereo acuity test
(at least 7/9)
Referents

nVisorST
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User Study Design
• Independent Variables
– Environment { indoor, outdoor } within subjects
– Tramlines { on, off } within subjects
– Gridpoints { on, off } within subjects
– Distance within subjects
• { 4.83, 9.66, 14.49, 19.32, 24.15, 28.98, 33.81, 38.64 } meters
– Repetition within subjects
• { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }

• Dependent Variables
– Signed, absolute, or normalized error
– Response time
– User position
– NASA TLX after each environment

• Design Details
– Seven to fourteen days between environments – not counterbalanced
– Colors were presented in random permutation; target at random start position
– Yields 160 trials per environment per subject; 3840 total data points 5
 User Study Design
Gridpoints on
Tramlines on

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Hypotheses

• Outdoor environment would have greater

error due to loss of perspective
• Tramlines and gridpoints would reduce the
error in depth matching
• Increasing error and decreasing precision
with increasing distance
• As seen in previous study, improved
performance with repetition
– Despite the lack of feedback
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Main Effect:
Environment on Normalized Error
• Underestimated
depth in indoor
environment;
overestimated
depth in outdoor
environment
• Not an effect of
distance, since this
is normalized error F(1,11)=11.032, p=0.007

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Main Effect:
Repetition on Normalized Error
• Users increased
their estimate with
increasing repetition
• No feedback provided
• Not a reduction in the
error for the outdoor
environment; did
represent a reduction
of error for the indoor F(4,44)=6.613, p=0.000
environment

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Main Effect:
Gridpoints on Signed Error
• Not a “real” effect;
entirely due to
sixth referent
• Disappointing;
implies that
gridpoints were
not truly useful

F(1,11)=5.279, p=0.042

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Main Effect:
Distance on Absolute Error
• Absolute error
grew and precision
decreased with
increasing target
distance
– Consistent with
general results on
depth perception
– Indicates validity
of the task F(7,77)=13.391, p=0.000

• Difference between
indoor and outdoor rates
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Main Effect:
Distance on Response Time
• Typical effect:
Users were
slower for more
distant targets
• Uniform random
variable for initial
position should
have evened out
effect of distance; forced F(7,77)=25.620, p=0.000
initial position to be at least
five meters from correct position
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Main Effect:
Repetition on Response Time
• Users got faster with
repetition
– Likely due to
familiarity with
equipment and
order of colors
– Fourth and fifth
repetitions nearly
equal speed
• Does not imply that there F(4,44)=16.717, p=0.000

were no mistakes in color

identification; outliers do exist
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Effect of Tramlines
• Interaction found
between tramlines
and distance
• For three most
distant referents,
tramlines helped
outdoors
• These referents
were beyond the
range of stereo as a depth cue
Restricted analysis
• At this distance, our previous study showed F(1,11)=5.356,
a change to overestimation from p=0.041
underestimation
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Outlier Removal

• Some subjects
were not very
good at the
task
• Based on the
graph of error
by subject, we
re-ran the
analysis with subjects
S01 (low), S03 (high), and S12 (high) removed
• Main effects remained; new interaction for tramlines
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Subjective Results

• Users completed NASA TLX after indoor session

and after outdoor session
NASA TLX
Environment Sequence Mean Range
Indoor First 52 35 – 69
Outdoor +7 to +14 days 44 19 – 77

• Most users thought they did better outdoors (10-2)

• Slight increases in eye strain, fatigue, dizziness, and
pain during both and indoor and outdoor sessions
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Possible Error Models
• Ponzo illusion
– Predicts change in perceptual size
– May thus cause stretch of perceived depth,
but should have caused this indoors too
• Brightness differences
– Predicts compression for distant referents, stretch for nearby referents
– Colors faded during outdoor sessions
• Height and Declination
– Amount of variation was 18cm maximum Typo in proceedings (says 28)
– Kept angle of declination constant by using platforms under referents
– Predicts stretch for nearby, compression for distant referents
d Δd
• Constant perceptual size -18.3°
h (h+Δh)
– Predicts compression
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Summary: Results

• Observed a difference for AR depth perception between indoor

(underestimation) and outdoor (overestimation)
– Indoor data does not agree with our own previous studies which showed both
underestimation (medium-field) and overestimation (medium-to-far-field)
• Appears that tramlines helped users correct their depth estimates
somewhat for distant targets in the outdoor environment
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Future Work

• Counterbalance indoor and outdoor sessions

– Order effects have been noticed with depth
perception in real and immersive environments
– These studies used different protocols for
estimation and did not study AR
• Investigate difference between this data and
our previously-collected data
• Effect of registration?

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Future Work

• Outlier definition and analysis

Is this an outlier?
This is an outlier

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Acknowledgments

• Anonymous subjects, anonymous reviewers

• Support provided by NRL Base Program

Thank you for your attention!

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Indoor vs. Outdoor Depth Perception for
Mobile Augmented Reality
Mark A. Livingston, Zhuming Ai, J. Edward Swan II, Harvey S. Smallman

Any Questions?

http://www.ait.nrl.navy.mil/3dvmel/
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