Test of Balanced Transparency

Abstract

It is implicitly or explicitly assumed in current transparency models that all the parts of a completely transparent surface have the same perceived degree of transparency. In general, the two experiments reported here have shown that this assumption is false. Consequently, any general transparency equation based on this assumption is unjustified. Separate transparency equations for the different parts of a transparent surface are instead justified. This indicates the need for a model of the overall judgment of transparency of these parts. In the second experiment the hypothesis that the judged degree of transparency of a whole transparent surface is a weighted average of the judged degrees of transparency of the different parts of this surface was tested. The results contradict this hypothesis and support the idea that the judgment of transparency of a whole surface and that of its parts depend on different stimulus conditions.