Evaluation of the Legibility for Characters Composed of Multiple Point Sources in Fog.

The luminance conditions were investigated, at that the characters composed of multiple point sources were as legible as a character having a uniformly luminous surface in fog, in order to make the use of variable-message signs practical at airports. As the results, it was found that the thicker the fog or the higher the illuminance, the better the legibility of the point source characters become compared with the uniformly luminous surface characters. It is supposed that the ease of extracting each individual point source makes the characters composed of multiple point sources more legible even if their luminance is low. So the results show that if the conventional luminance standard is applied to the average luminance of a character composed of multiple point sources, a character composed of multiple point sources could be recognized without any degradation in legibility.