Abstract
In modern Night Vision Devices (NVDs) ‘halo’ around bright light sources remains a salient imaging artifact. Although a common feature of image intensified imagery, little is known of the perceptual and operational effects of this device limitation. This paper describes two related sets of experiments. In the first set of experiments, we provide quantitative measurements of Night Vision Device (NVD) halos formed by light sources as a function of intensity and distance. This characterization allows for analysis of the possible effects of halo on human perception through NVDs. In the second set of experiments, the effects of halation on the perception of depth and environmental layout are investigated psychophysically. The custom simulation environment used and results from psychophysical experiments designed to analyze halo-induced errors in slope estimation are presented. Accurate simulation of image intensifier physics and NVD scene modeling is challenging and computationally demanding, yet needs to be performed in real-time at high frame rates and at high-resolution in advanced military simulators. Given the constraints of the real-time simulation, it is important to understand how NVD artifacts impact task performance in order to make rational engineering decisions about the required level of fidelity of the NVD simulation. A salient artifact of NVD viewing is halo, the phenomenon where the image of a bright light source appears surrounded by disc-like halo. High-fidelity physical modeling of these halo phenomena would be computationally expensive. To evaluate the level of approximation that would be sufficient for training purposes human factors data is required.
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