Effects of virtual lighting on visual performance and eye fatigue

This study is designed to determine whether differences in eye fatigue and visual performance can be shown under varying virtual industrial lighting conditions. It is based on the results of studies of more traditional video display terminal (VDT) tasks reported in the literature. One experiment was designed to determine if the effects of virtual lighting on eye fatigue and visual performance in a simulated virtual industrial environment are similar to some other VDT tasks with varying luminance contrast. Results of a test of 20 participants in a vigilance task show that there is a significant difference in performance and eye fatigue in the virtual environment with varying virtual light conditions. These results may help designers see that performance in some virtual "lighting" conditions, for some tasks, is consistent with that in the real. However, due to the difficulties of determining the appropriate virtual objects to be considered for the luminance measures, additional research is needed to be able to generalize the results to other industrial training scenarios. A second experiment was intended to test for the luminance decrement in a VDT that was shown in recent literature. The results would have potential implications for the experiment that included a vigilance task. However, the results showed that the luminance decrement demonstrated in recent literature did not occur. These results suggest that the equipment used in the present experiments should not cause difficulty in interpreting the results of the vigilance task.