Temperature Illusions in Mixed Reality using Color and Dynamic Graphics

Sensory illusions - where a sensory stimulus causes people to perceive effects that are altered by a different sensory stimulus - have the potential to enrich mixed-reality based interactions. The well-known colour-temperature illusion is a sensory illusion that causes people to, somewhat counterintuitively, perceive blue objects to feel warmer and red objects to feel colder. There is currently little information about whether this illusion can be recreated in mixed reality (MR). Additionally, it is unknown whether dynamic graphical effects made possible by mixed-reality systems could create a similar or potentially stronger effect to the color-temperature illusion. The results of our study (n=30) support that the color-temperature illusion can be recreated in MR and that dynamic graphics can create a new temperature-sensory illusion. Our dynamic-graphics-temperature illusion creates a stronger effect than the color-temperature illusion and has more intuitive relationship between the stimulus and the effect: cold graphical effects (a virtual ice ball) are perceived as colder and hot graphical effects (a virtual fire ball) as hotter. Our results demonstrate that mixed reality has the potential to create novel and stronger temperature-based illusions and encourage further investigation into graphical effects to shape user perception.