Sd. Bergen et al., THE VALIDITY OF COMPUTER-GENERATED GRAPHIC IMAGES OF FOREST LANDSCAPE, Journal of environmental psychology, 15(2), 1995, pp. 135-146
This study examines the validity of using computer-generated graphic i
mages of forest landscapes as decisionmaking aids for visual quality m
anagement. Photographs have been found to be acceptable surrogates for
actual landscapes for judging visual quality. A public preference sur
vey was conducted to compare photographs of forest landscapes with com
puter images created with the Vantage Point landscape visualization to
ol. Moderate to high correlation was found between mean visual quality
ratings of photographs and corresponding Vantage Point images. Correl
ation levels between all ratings for individual photograph/image pairs
, however, are low. Individual observers, on average, show low levels
of correlation between their ratings, although some observers have sig
nificant correlation. Observer feedback indicates that the lack of cor
relation is due to the omission of important landscape elements in the
Vantage Point images. Omissions were the result of limitations in the
prototype version of Vantage Point.