Virtual or Real? Judging The Realism of Objects in Stylized Augmented Environments

In augmented reality, virtual graphical objects are overlaid over the real environment of the observer. Conventional augmented reality systems use standard computer graphics methods for generating the graphical representations of virtual objects. These renderings contain the typical artefacts of computer generated graphics, e.g., aliasing caused by the rasterization process and unrealistic, manually configured illumination models. Due to these artefacts, virtual objects look artificial and can easily be distinguished from the real environment. Recently, a different approach to generating augmented reality images was presented. In stylised augmented reality, similar types of artistic or illustrative stylisation are applied to the virtual objects and the camera image of the real environment [1]. Therefore, real and virtual image elements look more similar and are less distinguishable from each other. In this poster, we describe the results of a psychophysical study on the effectiveness of stylised augmented reality. A number of participants were asked to decide whether objects shown in images of augmented reality scenes are virtual or real. Conventionally rendered as well as stylised augmented reality images and short video clips were presented to the participants. The correctness of the participantsamp;amp;8217; responses and their reaction times were recorded. The results of our study clearly show that an equalized level of realism is achieved by using stylised augmented reality, i.e., that it is distinctly more difficult to discriminate virtual objects from real objects