Comparing the terrain reversal effect in satellite images and in shaded relief maps: an examination of the effects of color and texture on 3D shape perception from shading

Terrain reversal effect (TRE) causes reversed 3D shape perception in satellite images and shaded relief maps (SRMs), and introduces difficulties in identifying landforms such as valleys and ridges. With this paper, in a controlled laboratory experiment, we compare how well 27 participants could identify valleys and ridges over 33 locations using SRMs, color satellite images and grayscale satellite images. The main depth cue is shadow both in vertical-view images and SRMs. However, the presence of texture and color in images also affect 3D shape perception. All our participants experience the illusion strongly: with the SRMs, it is very severe (2% accuracy), with grayscale images low but considerably better than SRMs (17.6% accuracy), and slightly worse with color imagery (15.3% accuracy). These differences between SRMs and imagery suggest that the participants who are able to bypass the illusion consciously or subconsciously interpret the photographic information. We support this observation further with a cue-strength analysis. Furthermore, we provide exploratory analyses of the effects of expertise, global convexity bias, and bistable perception. Our original empirical observations serve towards a better understanding of this visual illusion, and contribute towards nuanced and appropriate solutions to correcting for TRE differently for satellite images and SRMs.