Augmenting visual perception with gaze-contingent displays

Abstract

Cheap and easy to use eye tracking can be used to turn a common display into a gaze-contingent display: a system that can react to the user’s gaze and adjust its content based on where an observer is looking. This can be used to enhance the rendering on screens based on perceptual insights and the knowledge about what is currently seen. This thesis investigates how GCDs can be used to support aspects of depth and colour perception. This thesis presents experiments that investigate the effects of simulated depth of field and chromatic aberration on depth perception. It also investigates how changing the colours surrounding the attended area can be used to influence the perceived colour and how this can be used to increase colour differentiation of colour and potentially increase the perceived gamut of the display. The presented investigations and empirical results lay the foundation for future investigations and development of gaze-contingent technologies, as well as for general applications of colour and depth perception. The results show that GCDs can be used to support the user in tasks that are related to visual perception. The presented techniques could be used to facilitate common tasks like distinguishing the depth of objects in virtual environments or discriminating similar colours in information visualisations.