Perception of linear self motion under different visual contrast conditions for development of driving simulator

When a visual stimulus that occupies a large area of an individual´s visual field moves uniformly in one direction, that individual perceives an illusion of self motion in the opposite direction. In this paper, we investigated the influences of visual contrast on perception of visual stimulus elicited the illusion of linear self motion (linear vection). Fourteen young adult male volunteer subjects participated in the study. The experimental stimuli were generated onto screen by computer. The subjects´ visual field was simultaneously stimulated by blue sine-wave patterns that moved in opposite directions. The visual stimuli changed into five spatial frequencies (0.033, 0.053, 0.084, 0.130, and 0.210 cycle/deg) and six contrast conditions. Subjects were asked to report the perceived motion velocity using the magnitude estimation method. In addition, the latency of linear vection has been recorded by computer. Our results suggested that the linear vection to be more compelling when the spatial frequency from 0.045cycle/deg to 0.286 cycle/deg with high contrast of visual stimuli.