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I think there is one fundamental flaw with simulating color seen by non humans or dichromat humans. I've seen this in all computer based simulators. They simply change the weight of some colors relatively to others.

But a dichromat with say, missing L cones will not simply mix green and red, he will experience "green" totally differently than a trichromat. What a trichromat call green is the result of the stimulation of both M and L cones. We cannot see the pure spectral green. We cannot subtract the L cones contributions to what we experience, and its is quite important. The dichromat won't have any L cones contribution, the physiological stimuli won't be the same. He sees the actual spectral green. A color we have never seen and that we cannot imagine.

Now there is an experiment to do : put a full page of bright red and stare at it for minutes. It will start to become orange-ish. This is your L cones getting tired. Now swiftly switch to a bright green full page (prepare it so you can switch with a key press). You will experience a purer green that you ever experienced, because this green will have less red component to it as your L cones are tired (the effect will last mere seconds and quickly fade into normal green). If you were able to completely remove your L cones, you would see what the dichromat sees.



For the lazy programmers who don't want to write some quick JS to simulate what a dichromat perceives as green:

http://ill.cc/colorz.html

click on the page, toggle between red & green with any keypress


If you're on a mobile device without a keyboard, I made an alternative version that changes on click rather than keypress:

http://jsbin.com/iPIrucU/1


Derp. I figured someone else would beat me to it. Press or click. It goes through 3 contrasting pairs (based on the wikipedia article):

http://jere.in/opponentprocess.html


I second your analysis. Moreover the 'qualia' perceived by any creature is not yet well defined. The whole effort is human-centric, even us looking at this web site and seeing 2 versions for comparison. One more thing, is the choice of a city view, which is quite unnatural and a panorama create by humans for humans.


Oh, wow, thas was an incredible experience, thanks!

In trying to explain it some way... the green was SO GREEN that it actually looked like it was flashing blue.

By the way, is there any other similar experiment I could try?


For some definition of 'similar': http://www.scientificpsychic.com/graphics/


You might be interested in what is called opponent process theory of color vision.


I know I can google it, but is there a particular link you recommend to read up on it?


As it happens I was just researching it myself (it was briefly mentioned in a lecture on scientific visualization). I found this (have not read yet), what seems like a thorough and serious treatment of the subject.

http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color2.html#heringtheory


that is very interesting, thank you! Could you link to some research/info or drop some terms so I can search myself?


I wrote up a little more detail about the sensitivity of the 3 "colors" of cones in your eye: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4169772


mind white balance correction?




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