Grant Pointon

• University of Utah

Virtual objects in augmented reality (AR) often appear to float atop real world surfaces, which makes it difficult to determine where they are positioned in space. This is problematic as many applications for AR require accurate spatial perception. In the current study, we examine how the way we render cast shadows--which act as an important monocu...

Measures of perceived affordances—judgments of action capabilities—are an objective way to assess whether users perceive mediated environments similarly to the real world. Previous studies suggest that judgments of stepping over a virtual gap using augmented reality (AR) are underestimated relative to judgments of real-world gaps, which are general...

Affordances are possibilities for action that depend on both an observer's capabilities and the properties of the environment. Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) have been used to examine affordances in adults, demonstrating that judgments about action capabilities are made similarly to the real world. However, less is known about affordance jud...

Experts’ cognitive abilities adapt in response to the challenges they face in order to produce elite-level performance. Expert athletes, in particular, must integrate their motor capabilities with their cognitive and perceptual processes. Indoor rock climbers are particularly unique athletes in that much of the challenge they face is to accurately...

Recent advancements in augmented reality (AR) have led to the development of several applications in domains such as architecture, engineering, and medical training. Typically, these applications present users with 3D virtual images in real environments that would not easily be portrayed otherwise (e.g., floor plans, arteries, etc.). The way users...

Augmented reality (AR) technologies have the potential to provide individuals with unique training and visualizations, but the effectiveness of these applications may be influenced by users' perceptions of the distance to AR objects. Perceived distances to AR objects may be biased if these objects do not appear to make contact with the ground plane...

It is an open question as to whether people perceive and act in augmented reality environments in the same way that they do in real environments. The current work investigated participants' judgments of whether or not they could act on an obstacle portrayed with augmented reality. Specifically, we presented gaps of varying widths and depths to part...

The utility of mediated environments increases when environmental scale (size and distance) is perceived accurately. We present the use of perceived affordances---judgments of action capabilities---as an objective way to assess space perception in an augmented reality (AR) environment. The current study extends the previous use of this methodology...