The aim of this thesis is to develop realistic simulations of vision impairments in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), in order to allow architects and lighting designers to test the accessibility of their designs for people with vision impairments. Physically plausible lighting of 3D models of architectural scenes is used to create realistic virtual environments that can be explored in VR. Eye diseases, such as cataracts, are simulated graphically, based on medical findings and eyesight tests adapted for the use in VR or AR. A new methodology is developed, to conduct user studies with people with normal sight, wearing a VR headset with simulated vision impairments, which facilitates the investigation of the influence of vision impairments, and different lighting condition under these impairments, on perception.
Fig.: Simulating Vision Impairments for Lighting Design Applications (Katharina Krösl)
Supervisor
This topic is supervised by a team of 3 supervisors. Lead supervisor is Georg Suter (Institute of Architectural Sciences). Additional supervisors are Michael Wimmer (Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms) and Monika Di Angelo (Institute of Computer Aided Automation).
