Several approaches to solve the rotation illusion with wheel effect

The wheel effect (also called the Wagon-wheel effect) is a well-known rotation illusion in which a rotating wheel, when displayed as individual frames, appears to rotate differently from its true rotation due to temporal aliasing. In this paper, we propose several approaches to solve this problem for synthetic imagery in computer animation. First, we develop an algorithm to compute the frame number at which our visual perception starts to incorrectly interpret the wheel rotation. By making this critical frame number available, we can correct the wheel rotation by manipulating its geometry while viewers are unaware of the change. Our second approach is developed based on the Nyquist sampling theorem. We can increase the sample rate to capture the essential deviation that correctly depicts the wheel rotation to take care of the under-sampling issue. Our third approach is based on the traditional view that texture is often used to aid our motion perception. We further identity certain rules that can be applied to the textures to distinguish the real motion from the illusion. For each approach, we analyze both the advantages and disadvantages and suggest the potential applications.