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Experiment Shows Stylized Rendering Enhances Presence In Immersive AR
An anonymous reader writes William Steptoe, a senior researcher in the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group at University College London, published a paper (PDF) detailing experiments dealing with the seamless integration of virtual objects into a real scene. Participants were tested to see if they could correctly identify which objects in the scene were real or virtual. With standard rendering, participants were able to correctly guess 73% of the time. Once a stylized rendering outline was applied, accuracy dropped to 56% (around change) and even further to 38% as the stylized rendering was increased. Less accuracy means users were less able to tell the difference between real and virtual objects. Steptoe says that this blurring of real and virtual can increase 'presence', the feeling of being truly present in another space, in immersive augmented reality applications.
It isn't terribly surprising that adding a cartoonish rendering effect to both real and virtual objects would make them more difficult to discern as such. I certainly wouldn't call it more immersive - quite the opposite, in fact. It is extremely obvious that what you are looking at has been altered and that you are not looking at "reality".