Pictorial Information Transmission Through Simulation
Robert T. P. Wang · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1975
In an age when man is inundated with information, his natural ability to selectively assimilate the data presented to him has become an indispensible tool for survival. By the same token, man's visual perception limitations have been used to reduce the amount of data needed to reproduce pictorial information designed for his consumption. A comparative study of two divergent approaches to the problem of providing an optimum amount of video information to a human viewer is discussed. Video communication systems exemplify one area where the approach consists of reducing the data from real world scenes by video data compression algorithms. The opposite approach is found in visual simulators where scenes are constructed synthetically to approach real world realism by adding cues to the basic structure of the digital image representation used. Such simulators are used in groundbased trainers designed to reduce the cost of training operators of expensive equipment. In both situations there is a need to provide realistic video to a human observer. In the quest for optimum pictorial information transmission, simulated scenes are shown to provide some rather unusual, hitherto unexplored, insights and alternatives.