Perceptual evaluation of position and orientation context rules for pedestrian formations

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate the effects of position and orientation on the plausibility of pedestrian formations. In a perceptual study we investigated how humans perceive characteristics of virtual crowds in static scenes reconstructed from annotated still images where the orientations and positions of the individuals have been modified. We found that by applying rules based on the contextual information of the scene, such as the type of scene being portrayed, the presence of nearby individuals and objects and the constraints of the walking areas in the scene, we improved the perceived realism of the crowd formations. Results from this study can help in the creation of virtual crowds, such as computer graphics pedestrian models or architectural scenes.