Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) is a rapidly developing technology with use cases ranging everywhere from medicine to entertainment. This research focuses on optical see-through (OST) AR, one of the common overarching types of available augmented reality devices. Color appearance in OST AR systems is affected by a mix of the viewing conditions and environment of the real world and the transparent virtual elements. Accurate control of the color of AR content in real-world use cases, which often includes changes in color over time in both parts of the environment, is important for many applications. This dissertation includes three studies of color perception in dynamic lighting and AR content, which provide some of the first insights and models of AR perception in dynamic, realistic contexts. A first experiment was designed to investigate chromatic adaptation to dynamic illumination changes, important to understand before adding AR virtual content. The temporal aspect of such stimuli makes the time course of adaptation of particular interest, beyond merely the extent of adaptation. This study provided a measurement of adaptation to dynamic lighting without AR, which itself has not been extensively characterized before. The tracked achromatic appearance matched or even exceeded the chroma of the illumination even under quite chromatic lighting. Two experiments were designed to expand the understanding of the contributions of smooth color changes in both the ambient illumination and AR stimuli to chromatic adaptation in an AR environment as used in the previous study. These experiments added transparent AR stimuli in the same real-world illuminated environment. In the first of these experiments, the effect of changes in AR stimuli on adaptation was isolated while the illumination remained constant, and in the second experiment, adaptation was measured while the real illumination and AR stimuli changed incongruously. Results show that chromatic adaptation was determined mainly by the ambient illumination, with the AR adapting stimuli contributing a small but significant effect on adaptation state. A single exponential model was able to sufficiently describe the data from both experiments in AR with weighted contributions of the real and virtual elements.  The results provide several recommendations for AR in dynamic environments. While the conclusions drawn from these experiments are limited to conditions with small, lower luminance AR stimuli, they demonstrate a clear difference in the perception of physical stimuli compared to AR stimuli, emphasizing the need for experimentation in AR environments and suggesting that color appearance of AR stimuli may be more similar to that of emissive stimuli than reflective stimuli. The results indicate that color appearance is influenced by the real-world illumination to a greater degree than by AR virtual content under the experimental conditions. Consequently, AR elements that are rendered under different lighting conditions than the real environment may be interpreted instead as having a different simulated surface color. This research does also suggest that adaptation is still affected by the AR virtual stimuli, albeit to a lesser degree. Consistency in the illumination across the real and virtual environments therefore eliminates any competition between the two sources impacting the state of adaptation, which may lead to a more seamless blending of the two environments and a more predictable color appearance.

Publication Date

6-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Color Science (Ph.D.)

Department, Program, or Center

Color Science

College

College of Science

Advisor

Michael J. Murdoch

Advisor/Committee Member

Mark Fairchild

Advisor/Committee Member

Susan Farnand

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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