Speaker: Matthias Bernhard (ICGA)
This thesis is concerned with gaze analysis methods to study visual attention in interactive 3D computer-graphics applications, such as virtual environments or computer games. Under this scope, research has been carried out in two directions: On the one hand, it was investigated how gaze analysis in three-dimensional virtual environments can be advanced. On the other hand, approaches were explored which improve three-dimensional graphics by taking into account visual attention of a user.
To advance gaze analysis in 3D computer graphics applications, two challenges have been addressed: First, inferring the object of attention at a certain point in time from the current out- put of an eye tracker – a technique which we denote as gaze-to-object mapping –, and second, deriving a statistical model for visual attention - a data structure we denote as importance map - from sequences of gaze samples recorded from many users. While addressing these challenges is a crucial step towards advancing gaze analysis and research on visual attention which employs modern computer graphics, the results may also be used in applications which attempt to perceptually optimize rendering. Thus, the third challenge addressed in this thesis was to explore an example application for attention-aware rendering techniques, where gaze-to-object mapping or importance maps can be employed to determine or predict the object of attention at run time. Thus, this thesis concludes with a pilot study on an application that dynamically adjusts the con- figuration of a stereo 3D display such that the object being attended by the user can be seen most comfortably.