Wave-optical phenomena, such as diffraction, significantly impact the visual appearance of surfaces. Despite their importance, wave-optical reflection models are rare and computationally expensive. Recently, we presented a real-time model that accounts for diffraction-induced color shifts and speckle. Given that diffraction phenomena are highly dependent on illumination and viewing directions, as well as stereoscopic vision, we developed a VR demo to evaluate the new model. This demo shows the substantial impact of diffraction on the appearance of rough surfaces, particularly in stereoscopic viewing.

In order to support the decision-making process of industry on how to implement Augmented Reality (AR) in production, this article wants to provide guidance through a set of comparative user studies. The results are obtained from the feedback of 160 participants who performed the same repair task on a switch cabinet of an industrial robot. The studies compare several AR instruction applications on different display devices (head-mounted display, handheld tablet PC and projection-based spatial AR) with baseline conditions (paper instructions and phone support), both in a single-user and a collaborative setting. Next to insights on the performance of the individual device types for the single mode operation, the study is able to show significant indications on AR techniques are being especially helpful in a collaborative setting.