Visualizing lighting with images: converging between the predictive value of renderings and photographs

Abstract

Performing psychophysical experiments to investigate lighting perception can be expensive and time consuming if complex lighting systems need to be implemented. In this paper, display-based experiments are explored as a cost effective and less time consuming alternative to real-world experiments. The aim of this work is to better understand the upper limit of prediction accuracy that can be achieved when presenting an image on a display rather than the real-world scene. We compare the predictive value of photographs and physically-based renderings on a number of perceptual lighting attributes. It is shown that the photographs convey statistically the same lighting perception as in a real-world scenario. Initial renderings have an inferior performance, but are shown to converge towards the performance of the photographs through iterative improvements.