Blending Entropy: A Term for Addressing Information Density in Mediated Reality

The virtuality continuum describes the degrees of positive virtuality under the umbrella term mixed reality. Besides adding virtual information within a mixed environment, diminished reality aims at reducing real world information. Mann defined the term mediated reality (MR), which also considered diminished reality, but without the possibility to describe different degrees of fusion between a mixed and a diminished reality. That is why this work defines the new term blending entropy that captures the relations between a mixed and a diminished reality. The blending entropy is based on the information density of the mediated reality and the actual area the user has to comprehend, which is named perceptual frustum. We describe the blending entropy’s twodimensional dependencies and detail important points in the blending entropy’s space. 1 Definition of the Blending Entropy In information theory, entropy is the average information within a message. In a MR, entropy can be viewed as the total of any information perceived by the user. The blending entropy is characterized by the entropy density and the perceptual frustum as illustrated in Figure 1.