Creating Immersive Virtual Landscapes: A User-Centered Approach to Enhance Depth Perception in Head-Mounted Displays

This paper investigates the effects of color, luminance, and transparency as depth distortion cues in Virtual Reality (VR) Head-mounted Displays (HMD). The aim is to tackle more in-depth immersion: focusing on interaction accuracy with transparent objects in HMDs. Due to the illumination and absence of texture, transparent objects are mainly displayed with colors. Recently, studies on transparent hands and objects have elucidated potential approaches regarding interaction with transparent elements. However, findings have not considered color and luminance as depth distortion cues for interacting in virtual landscapes. This paper used the forced-choice pairwise comparison experiment method and evaluated data based on the Kendall coefficient of agreement and consistency. Reverse effects of transparency on color and luminance are discovered. Cool colors are perceived nearer than warm colors in 90% transparency. Dark colors are sensed closer than bright colors in high transparency levels. These results reject the classical effects of color and luminance within VR HMDs. These findings help VR design tool developers who emphasize a particular use of depth cues. Designers can utilize the studied effects of color and luminance on transparent objects as an advantage in designing more interactive and immersive virtual landscapes.