Table 1.
Colorimetric values of the presented surfaces.
Columns x, y, and Y display the CIE xyY values according to the 10° CIE 1964 standard observer [34], specified relative to a D65 white point [33].
Fig 1.
Screenshots of the display presented to the left eye of the 8 presented surface-luminance combinations.
Row 1 shows rooms with bright rear walls, row 2 shows rooms with dark rear walls. Columns 1 and 2 show rooms with bright side walls; columns 3 and 4 show rooms with dark side walls. Columns 1 and 3 show rooms with bright ceilings; columns 2 and 4 show rooms with dark ceilings. In all screenshots, the simulated width, depth, and height were 4.50 m, 6.00 m, and 2.90 m, respectively.
Fig 2.
Top view (left-hand side) and side view (right-hand side) of the observer's virtual position relative to the simulated rooms.
Within the simulated rooms, the gray-shaded areas were not visible to the observer.
Fig 3.
Mean width estimates as a function of physical width.
The data lines in panels A, B, and C show the effects of side-wall luminance, rear-wall luminance, and ceiling luminance, respectively. Error bars show ± 1 standard error of the mean (SEM) of the 20 subjects in each condition.
Fig 4.
Mean width estimates as a function of ceiling luminance and rear-wall luminance.
Error bars show ± 1 SEM of the 20 subjects in each condition.
Fig 5.
Mean depth estimates as a function of physical depth.
The data lines in panels A, B, and C show the effects of side-wall luminance, rear-wall luminance, and ceiling luminance, respectively. Error bars show ± 1 SEM of the 20 subjects in each condition.
Fig 6.
Mean depth estimates as a function of side-wall luminance, ceiling luminance, and rear-wall luminance.
Error bars show ± 1 SEM of the 20 subjects in each condition.
Table 2.
Overview of effects of surface luminance on the perceived layout of interior space, as a function of the room surface that was varied in luminance, and the room dimension that was judged by the observers.
indicates the mean simulated size of the judged spatial dimension. Yb and Yd indicate the luminance of the brightest and the darkest presented surface color, respectively. The difference in perceived brightness (ΔB), the mean difference in perceived spatial extent (
), and Cohen's [37] dz are reported for the comparison of the brightest and darkest presented surface color. We calculated the difference in perceived brightness between the dark and the bright stimulus by ΔB = Yb0.33−Yd0.33, where the power function links the perceived brightness B to the physical luminance Y (e.g., [39], see also [40,41]). Bold dz-values indicate significant effects (p < .05). Effects of bounding-surface luminance are highlighted by a gray background.