Estimating Time to Contact in Virtual Reality: Does Contrast Matter?

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used in the research of pedestrian behavior. At the same time, empirical evidence suggests that perceptual processes in VR may deviate from real world. Such perceptual biases may affect the estimation of the time until a moving object reaches an observer (time to contact, TTC) - a parameter which is crucial to collision avoidance in the frequent use case of pedestrian street crossing.