LPC
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Projects
    • BlockyTalky
    • EPIC
    • Luminous Science
    • Weird Code Club
      • ARcadia
    • Creative++
  • Publications
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Resources
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Projects
    • BlockyTalky
    • EPIC
    • Luminous Science
    • Weird Code Club
      • ARcadia
    • Creative++
  • Publications
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Resources
Search

Viewing the World Through Your Pet's Eyes Using Snapchat Filters

4/23/2020

 
Author: Annie Kelly
​
Do you ever wonder how our pets see, hear, smell, and experience the world differently than we do?

While we can never know exactly what it is like to be our pets, but we can still explore what it would be like to have similar senses to our pets.

Certain senses like smell and hearing are hard for us to experience like our pets do, because these senses go far beyond our own capabilities. However, our cats' and our dogs' color perception is more limited than our own, so we can use Augmented Reality to look at the world with slightly diminished capabilities --- letting people explore the world from the visual perspective of a dog or cat.

We created DoggyVision and KittyVision filters for Snapchat to make this experience available for free! See the next section  for how to get these filters on your phone and laptop today.
DoggyVision and KittyVision...for Snapchat!
Picture
Picture
An unfiltered photo of a painting (left), the same painting taken using the KittyVision Snapchat filter (right). 
DoggyVision and KittyVision are now available for free through Snapchat.

If you are unfamiliar with Snapchat, it is a free photo-sharing app available for iOS and Android. One of Snapchat's main features is you can apply many different filters to your photographs and videos that you take through the app. 

If you have Snapchat, you can search for the filters DoggyVision and KittyVision through the app using the search bar, or visit these links on the device where you have installed Snapchat:
  • DoggyVision https://bit.ly/doggyvisionsnapchat
  • KittyVision https://bit.ly/kittyvisionsnapchat
When you open each link Snapchat will prompt you to "unlock" the filter for 48 hours. If they disappear after 2 days, just follow these steps again to re-add them.

You can also try scanning the "Snapcodes" (i.e. Snapchat QR codes) below directly through the Snapchat camera, however this method does not seem to work for all users.
Picture
Picture
For those who use Zoom, you can use Snapchat filters during your conference calls by downloading the Snap Camera app. From there, you can search for DoggyVision, KittyVision, and thousands of other filters.
How is my vision different from my dog's or my cat's?
Color Perception
Contrary to popular belief, our pets don't see the world in black and white. Meaning, they don't have monochromatic vision. Dogs and cats have dichromatic vision, which means they have two color-sensitive cone cells in their retinas, whereas humans have three. Humans have red, green, and blue cone cells, while dogs and cats have yellow and blue.
Picture
Picture
The two charts above show the color spectrum for a non-visually impaired human (top), and the color spectrum for dogs and cats (bottom). The bottom chart is also similar to deuteranopia in humans (red-green color blindness).
Visual Acuity
Visual acuity refers to visual clarity. Near- and far-sightedness are both conditions related to weakened visual acuity in the eye. Humans have 4-8x better visual acuity than dogs and cats. You can think of this as dogs and cats having a more "blurry" view of the world, similar to how if a human is nearsighted, farther objects will look blurrier than normal.
Brightness Discrimination
Brightness discrimination is the ability to perceive different shades of a color. Dogs and cats have brightness discrimination that is about 2x worse than humans. This effectively means they see the world with slightly less contrast.
Field of Vision
Field of vision describes the observable area of our eyes. For humans, our field of view is about 180 degrees, meaning if you picture a sphere around a human, we can observe most of the front half of the sphere that we are facing. Cats have a wider field of vision than humans do at around 200 degrees. Dogs have an even wider field of vision at around 240 degrees. Having a wider field of vision typically means less visual overlap between the eyes, therefore cats and dogs have poorer depth perception than humans do despite having better peripheral vision.

The shape of our corneas as well as the placement of our eyes on our heads affect field of vision, meaning that field of vision is also variable between breeds of cats and dogs. For example, pugs' eyes are situated more on the front of their face, whereas collies' eyes are placed further to the sides of the face.

These visual effects are not currently replicated in the DoggyVision or KittyVision filters, but could be with the addition of external lenses over the camera.
Differences between dog and cat vision
Dogs have a wider field of view than cats. It is also believed that cat's have worse brightness discrimination than dogs, but better vision than dogs in low-light conditions.

​While there are some differences between dog vision and cat vision, it is beyond the hardware of most phones to replicate all of these differences. Therefore, the DoggyVision and KittyVision filters are relatively similar, with the contrast being a little lower on the KittyVision filter.
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by National Science Foundation award #1736051​.
References
  1. https://dog-vision.com/
  2. https://www.eyeconsultants.net/the-vision-of-cats-vs-dogs.htm

Comments are closed.

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Projects
    • BlockyTalky
    • EPIC
    • Luminous Science
    • Weird Code Club
      • ARcadia
    • Creative++
  • Publications
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Resources