Within a Dutch research program on minimally invasive surgery, a large literature survey has been carried out. This article describes the state of the art in research on observation in laparoscopy. It gives an overview of factors impeding the surgeon and technical developments designed to overcome these problems. A large number of journals, proceedings, patents, and books starting from the year 1991 have been consulted. The survey was completed with a thorough MEDLINE search. The survey showed that many authors have an incomplete background in the fundamentals of visual perception. This leads to a lack of understanding and to the design of supporting aids that often are not very useful. The new aspect of this study is that it gives a complete and structured overview of laparoscopic observation problems and current solutions. The observation problems are structured according to visual perception theory. The solutions are critically considered, and their benefits and drawbacks are identified. The study shows that the benefits of stereo-endoscopes and motorized endoscope positioners are questionable. The addition of shadows and movement parallax is still a very important research topic.