Using graphical attributes to influence the perception of safety in a 3D environment

Abstract: Context. Most games make use of graphics to create an environment that fits the mood they wish to convey. To use a game's graphical attributes such as colour, shape and texture to their utmost ability, knowing how these are perceived could help. Objective. This paper tries to determine how graphical attributes such as colour, texture, and shapes affect the perceived safety of a path inside a 3d environment. Method. To reach the objective, an experiment was conducted with 20 participants. The experiment was a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) test of 38 pairs of images, where each pair contained two versions of a tunnel entrance scene rendered using different graphical attributes. Each difference was based around either colour (warm and cold colour schemes), shape (round, wide, angular and thin), or texture (rugged, neutral and sterile). Results. The experiment generated results that varied compared to the expected results. For instance, the wider shapes were seen as safer compared to the thinner shapes, as was the same result with rounder shapes being perceived safer than angular shapes. Although a few preferred the cold colour scheme, the warmer colour scheme was seen as safer by the majority. While expected to be perceived as less safe than neutral textures but more than the rugged ones, the sterile texture was actually most commonly seen as safe. Conclusions. The main conclusion that was made is that colour, texture and shape can be applied to change the perception of safety in a scene. However, when opposing attributes are used in combination, the result might be based on how dominant the attribute is. The dominance of the graphical attributes could be an interesting topic for future work.