Blending Entropy: A Term for Addressing Information Density in Mediated Reality

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of blending entropy to quantify information density in mediated reality, encompassing both augmented and diminished reality, based on information density and perceptual frustum.

Contribution

It defines blending entropy as a new metric capturing the degrees of fusion between mixed and diminished reality environments.

Findings

Blending entropy depends on information density and perceptual frustum.

The concept helps describe relations within mediated reality.

It provides a framework for analyzing mediated reality environments.

Abstract

The virtuality continuum describes the degrees of positive virtuality under the umbrella term mixed reality. Besides adding virtual information within a mixed environment, diminished reality aims at reducing real world information. Mann defined the term mediated reality (MR), which also considered diminished reality, but without the possibility to describe different degrees of fusion between a mixed and a diminished reality. That is why this work defines the new term blending entropy that captures the relations between a mixed and a diminished reality. The blending entropy is based on the information density of the mediated reality and the actual area the user has to comprehend, which is named perceptual frustum. We describe the blending entropy's twodimensional dependencies and detail important points in the blending entropy's space.