19th Annual Dinner and Demo Night

Beach BBQ: Monday, May 22, 2023, 6:00 – 8:00 pm, Beachside Sun Decks, limited seating in Banyan Breezeway
Demos: Monday, May 22, 2023, 7:00 – 10:00 pm, Talk Room 1-2

Please join us Monday evening for the 19th Annual VSS Dinner and Demo Night, a spectacular night of imaginative demos solicited from VSS members. The demos highlight the important role of visual displays in vision research and education.

This year’s Demo Night is organized and curated by Gideon Caplovitz, University of Nevada, Reno; Karen Schloss, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Peter Kohler, York University; Anna Kosovicheva, University of Toronto Mississauga

Demos are free to view for all registered VSS attendees and their families and guests. The Beach BBQ is free for attendees, but YOU MUST WEAR YOUR BADGE to receive dinner. Guests and family members must purchase a VSS Friends and Family Pass to attend the Beach BBQ. You can register your guests at any time at the VSS Registration Desk, located in the Grand Palm Colonnade. Guest passes may also be purchased at the BBQ event, beginning at 5:45 pm.

The following demos will be presented from 7:00 to 10:00 pm, in the Island Ballroom and Jacaranda Hall:

A potpourri of motion coherence failures and anomalies

Christopher Tyler, Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute

In a motion potpourri, an alternating ring demo challenges the perceptual motion coherence mechanism with alternating rings of counter-rotating motion and has an anomalous aftereffect. Transparent random-dot motion shows a contrast-increment double-bounce effect. A static triple spiral pattern generates more motion than the Kitaoka static motion demos.

An Interactive Motion Perception Tool for Kindergarteners (and Vision Scientists)

Aravind Battaje, Technische Universität Berlin, Martin Rolfs, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Have you ever wondered how early visual motion perception works on a certain visual phenomena? Well, wonder no more! We present an interactive tool that lets you point your phone or laptop camera at things and immediately gain an intuition for it. Our tool extends the spatiotemporal energy model (Adelson & Bergen, 1985; Watson & Ahumada,1985) to 3D (x-y-t) and runs real-time on most modern devices.

Augmented Reality Simulation of Bionic Vision

Justin Kasowski, UC Santa Barbara, Bionic Vision Lab

The Bionic Eye. Seemingly science fiction, this concept has become a reality with one commercially available device already having ~300-400 users, and many others in clinical development. Using a virtual reality headset, users can see VSS through a simulated bionic Eye. Presented by the UCSB Bionic Vision Lab.

Catch me if you can: the unpursuable vortex

Krischan Koerfer, University of Muenster, Tamara Watson, Western Sydney University, Markus Lappe, University of Muenster

A new class of motion stimuli that mimic non-rigid properties of water and fire. They can be perceived but cannot be pursued. Attempted pursuit lets one experience loss of spatial stability, making the presented vortex jump across each catch-up saccade.

Change blindness

Haley Frey, Michigan State University

There are few slow change blindness stimuli for use in systematic studies, so we created some. Here, we demonstrate how effective they are at inducing change blindness!

Contour Erasure and Filling-in

Yih-Shiuan Lin, University of Regensburg, Chien-Chung Chen, National Taiwan University, Mark W. Greenlee, University of Regensburg, Stuart Anstis, University of California, San Diego

Here in our demos, you will see several examples of the fascinating contour erasure effect: objects of various shapes and sizes completely disappear into the background or merge together after only a short adaptation period on their contours. We will also demonstrate the application of such effect in our contour adaptation contrast threshold paradigm.

Create interesting visual displays with OCTA

Eline Van Geert, KU Leuven

Multi-element displays differ in the number and variety of elements they contain, as well as in how these elements are organized (e.g., based on color, shape, or size, and in rows, columns, or more complex organizations). Which is your favorite? Come play with the OCTA app or Python toolbox (https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-01900-w)!

Delayed visual feedback

Jeff Mulligan, Independent contractor

Introducing artificial delays in the visual consequences of a motor action can produce oscillatory behavior. The frequency of oscillation depends both on the externally applied delay, and internal delays (which vary with the type of stimulus). These effects will be demonstrated with a simple manual tracking task.

Flip tilt illusion — can you see these rings?

Li Zhaoping, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics

In flip tilt illusion, the orientation of an item appears perpendicular to its actual orientation in visual periphery. I will demonstrate using some images and explain how this illusion can be understood from mechanisms of the primary visual cortex (V1) and an information bottleneck from V1 to higher visual areas.

Fun with Birefringent Surfaces and Polarized Light

Andrew Piotrowski, Chloe Leroy, Howard C. Hughes (Retired), Gideon Paul Caplovitz University of Nevada Reno

What could possibly go wrong?!?

Going from vision research to art with stimupy

Lynn Schmittwilken; Joris Vincent, Computational Psychology, Technische Universität Berlin

Visual stimulus design is equally science and art. Our demo is about getting creative with visual stimuli: recreate well-established phenomena, explore parameterizations, or implement your very own stimulus. For this, you will use stimupy – a Python package built exactly for that purpose: to easily create and parameterize visual stimuli.

High Speed Gaze-Contingent Visual Search

Kurt Debono, Marcus Johnson, SR-Research

Try to find the target in a visual search array which is continuously being updated based on the location of your gaze. High speed video-based eye tracking combined with a high-speed monitor make for a compelling challenge.

Interactive virtual and real-world physics games

Giuliana Bucci-Mansilla, Jason Fischer, Garrett Goldin, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University

Come play with blocks! In our interactive physics games, you’ll put your prediction skills to the test by keeping a teetering tray balanced as you unload it (extra fun when you compete with a friend) and catching virtual blocks in a real-world box in a mixed reality display.

It’s a colourful world … or is it?

Katia Ripamonti, Rob Lee, Cambridge Research Systems

We perceive the world around us exquisitely colourful and deeply saturated. In a series of demonstrations based on Tyler (iPerception, 2016), Cohen et al. (PNAS, 2020) and Otten et al. (APS, 2016), we show that peripheral colour awareness may take place even in the absence of a physical correlate.

Let’s test the Polarized contrast threshold

Payal Sangani, L V Prasad Eye Institute

Macular pigment can be perceived as a Haidinger’s Brush, an entoptic phenomena. It just takes a minute or so to screen and differentiate normal and abnormal central vision. It also checks individual’s sensitivity level of polarized contrast. It can be used as a Prognostic tool for amblyopia treatment outcome.

Magnetic Sand Illusion

Kensuke Shimojo, Harvard-Westlake school, Eiko Shimojo, Caltech, Daw-An Wu, Caltech, Shinsuke Shimojo, Caltech

Move one’s hand closer and farther over a dynamic static noise display. The random dots appear as though they are attracted or repelled by the finger, depending on its movement.

McGurk 2.0 – Effects of orientation and image fidelity on the illusion

Jonathon Toft-Nielsen, Intelligent Hearing Systems / JÖRVEC Corp, Özcan Özdamar, University of Miami

The McGurk effect is a well know auditory illusion where speech sounds are mis-categorized due to conflicting visual cues from the speaker’s face. It is a salient effect that is almost impossible to ignore, but what happens to the effect when the participant doesn’t recognize a face as a face?

Motion Pareidolia

Nicolas Davidenko, UC Santa Cruz, Allison K. Allen, UC Santa Cruz, Nathan H. Heller, Dartmouth, Matthew T. Jacobs, Queen’s University

Motion pareidolia is the perception of coherent motion in stimuli that are completely random. In this demo, you will be primed to see different motion patterns (drifting, rebounding, rotating, expanding, etc.) in randomly refreshing pixel arrays. You will also try to prime yourself, choosing what motion you want to see.

Out of your body and into a rabbit, or a crab. Virtual reality displays from a different point of view.

Anwesha Das, Daw-An Wu, Shinsuke Shimojo, Caltech

Using virtual reality goggles to see through a pair of cameras, you can find yourself seeing from an odd point of view, depending on how the cameras are placed. You might have an out-of-body experience, widen your field of view, or see more around the sides of an object.

Pictorial spacecrafts: the Ames’ glass

Maarten Wijntjes, Delft University of Technology

In his paper “The illusion of depth from single pictures”, Ames describes nine ways of creating illusory depth, one of which is looking through a cylindrically curved lens. In this demo you can experience Ames’ conjecture yourself but be warned, the effect tends to be idiosyncratic (i.e., does not work for everyone).

Saccade Sighting Showdown!

Peter April, Jean-Francois Hamelin, Dr. Sophie Kenny, Dr. Jonathan Tong, VPixx Technologies

The PROPixx 1440Hz projector is being used to study visual processing during saccades. This year we add a game to our demo. We present a word which is only visible during your saccades. The player with the fastest word sighting wins a drink ticket!

StroboPong

VSS Staff

Back by popular demand. Strobe lights and ping pong!

The Audiovisual Rabbit Illusion: Effects of Illusory Contours

Matilda Cederblad, California Institute of Technology, Noelle R. B. Stiles, University of Southern California, and Caltech, Shinsuke Shimojo, Caltech, Armand R. Tanguay, Jr., University of Southern California, and Caltech

The Audiovisual Rabbit Illusion shows that the presence or absence of a sound in a flash-beep-sequence can create an illusory flash or make a veridical flash invisible. This demonstration compares the original illusion with a version that incorporates illusory contours, indicating that illusory contours can be rapidly integrated with audition.

The FechDeck: a handtool for exploring psychophysics

James Ferwerda, Rochester Institute of Technology

The FechDeck is an ordinary deck of playing cards modified to support exploration of psychophysical methods. The deck allows users to conduct threshold experiments using Fechner’s methods of adjustment, limits, and constant stimuli, scaling experiments using Thurstone’s ranking, pair comparison, and category methods, and Stevens’ method of magnitude estimation.

The UW Virtual Brain ProjectTM: Virtual reality exploration of the visual, auditory, and touch systems

Melissa Schoenlein, Department of Psychology, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery; University of Wisconsin-Madison, Nathaniel Miller, University of Minnesota Medical School, Chris Racey, Psychology, University of Sussex, Simon Smith, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ross Treddinick, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Kudirat Alimi, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chris Castro, College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bas Rokers, Department of Psychology, New York University, Abu Dhabi, Karen B. Schloss, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Explore the UW Virtual Brain Project – visual, auditory, and touch system lessons in virtual reality or on a desktop display. Each lesson provides an immersive experience of information flow from sensory input to cortical processing. Evidence suggests these experiences are fun and easy to use, which can advance neuroscience education.

The Weak conquer the Strong

Adam Reeves, Northeastern University, Quan Lei, Wichita State University

When mixed with an equal number of less salient (grey) disks, a set of salient (white) disks looks less numerous. The grey disks are unaffected by the white disks. This illusion was already published in JoV and followed up in Frontiers. We will show the original effect with new variations.

Triangles are AMAZING!!!

Tess White, Madalyn Sawatzky, Drew Asborno, Seth Freese, Gideon Caplovitz, University of Nevada, Reno

Triangles aren’t usually considered in visual perception, but they have some amazing properties that make them so special! Come explore the wonderful world of triangles with us!

Vision’s Chainsaw

Patrick Cavanagh, Glendon College, Stuart Anstis, UCSD

Moving frames can displace the apparent location of brief flashes presented at the moment the frame changes direction. We use this here to attempt a never before captured dismemberment of the human body. This is a live, so to speak, presentation and we invite observers to step up and be severed. Sorry, served.

Why do rigid objects look non-rigid?

Akihito Maruya, Qasim Zaidi, State University of New York, College of Optometry

Two solid rings rigidly linked at an angle and rolled together are seen as non-rigidly wobbling. Using computer graphics, we show that the perceived non-rigidity depends on speed and ring shape. Using model simulations, we show why the percepts depend on shape-based prior assumptions and properties of motion mechanisms.