Augmented reality (AR) technologies create an immersive environment by augmenting the real world with rendered virtual objects. One of the key requirements of an AR system is to understand how users perceive the depth of an AR object. Perceived distances to AR objects can be based on various depth cues such as rendering method used for the virtual object. The existing researches on the shading model and opacity mainly focus on the shape perception or the position relationship of several virtual objects in the virtual environment. We predicted that shading models and opacity would impact a user's estimation of a virtual object's depth in AR. We conducted two experiments to investigate the impact of color, size (Experiment 1), shading model, and opacity (Experiment 2) on the depth perception in an optical see‐through head‐mounted display (HMD). We found that the virtual object's color and size impact estimation efficacy. An interaction effect between color and size was also found. The results showed that shading models with specular highlights could help to improve depth perception in AR. Additionally, users had the lowest matching error when the opacity of a virtual object was 0.8.

中文翻译：

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阴影模型和不透明度对光学透视增强现实中深度感知的影响

增强现实（AR）技术通过使用渲染的虚拟对象扩展现实世界来创建沉浸式环境。AR系统的关键要求之一是了解用户如何感知AR对象的深度。到AR对象的感知距离可以基于各种深度提示，例如用于虚拟对象的渲染方法。现有的关于阴影模型和不透明度的研究主要集中在虚拟环境中几个虚拟物体的形状感知或位置关系。我们预测阴影模型和不透明度将影响用户对AR中虚拟对象深度的估计。我们进行了两个实验来研究颜色，尺寸（实验1），阴影模型，和光学不透明头戴式显示器（HMD）的深度感知的不透明度（实验2）。我们发现虚拟对象的颜色和大小会影响估计效果。还发现颜色和尺寸之间有相互作用。结果表明，具有镜面高光的阴影模型可以帮助改善AR的深度感知。此外，当虚拟对象的不透明度为0.8时，用户具有最低的匹配错误。