Abstract
The nature and role of ambient vision in environmental perception, as opposed to focal vision, is discussed based on recent findings in physiology and psychology, and a method which describes ambient visual information is proposed and tested by applying it to assess outdoor spaces of housing neighborhoods. The information obtained by ambient vision is hypothetically defined as a statistical measure of an array of visual surfaces which surround an observer. A personal, computer program was developed to measure the solid angles of visible area of the surfaces and the volume of visible space around a given point in a proposed environment.
