Generating colour and texture verniers

This paper describes computer graphics techniques for presenting visual stimuli in a vernier format composed out of coloured texture patterns. Such stimuli can be used to investigate the performance at the task of localising boundaries mediated by changes in colour and/or texture. We summarise the contents as follows: (1) Techniques for presenting visual stimuli are reviewed with a view to how they might be used to present colour and texture verniers. (2) The design of the vernier stimuli for the localisation task is considered. (3) Significant elements of this design are: (a) the use of non-isoplanatic textures to avoid interference effects at boundaries, (b) the modulation of the texture patterns along axes in MacLeod-Boynton colour space so that relative retinal cone contributions are controlled, and (c) the use of double-buffering, colour map manipulation, and contrast randomisation techniques to avoid problems commonly encountered when presenting computer graphics stimuli on colour monitors. (4) Results of a psychophysical experiment that presents colour and texture verniers are reported elsewhere.