Comparing sky shape skeletons for the analysis of the visual dynamics along routes

The motion of an observer in a given space produces a particular perception called motion perception. This has been defined by Gibson as the gradual changes in the rate of displacements of contour lines in the visual field of the observer. This paper describes a new approach intended for analysing the motion perspective in order to quantify the morphology of urban open spaces along routes. It is based on spherical projections, which provide the shape of the sky boundary around the observer. The projections are studied through their skeletons, which are continuous sets of curves obtained by a progressive thinning down of the shapes around their main saliencies. The proposed method uses these skeletons to follow the variations in the shape of the sky boundary between the successive views. Measures of these variations have been developed and applied in a range of simplified theoretical examples and a real field example in order to show that they succeeded in capturing significant variations in spherical projections.