Survey on some key technologies of virtual tourism system based on Web3D

Some key technologies on how to build large-scale virtual tourism systssems comprehensively on Web browsers and mobiles were analyzed and the current R&D status on Web3D virtual tourism was surveyed insightfully. Then, some methods were summarized, including 3D trees or plants modeling, 3D architectural modeling, 3D Virtual Human behavior modeling, virtual agents path planning, collision detection and progressive transmission strategy suitable for developing large scale Web3D tourism scenarios. Also, some bottleneck problems of Web3D virtual tourism system were investigated. At the same time, the lightweight 3D engine, the lightweight 3D modeling, the lightweight 3D streaming and P2P based progressive transmission of huge Web3D tourism contents would become much helpful to breakthrough those bottlenecks of Web3D tourism systems were pointed out. In addition, all kinds of Web3D engines in terms of lightweight, realism and efficiency that would be a good reference for developers to choose during various applications were compared comprehensively. Finally, the prospect of future investigation of Web3D tourism system is presented, which will be going on in terms of four characteristics lightweight, high-speed, realism, beauty.

The Iray Light Transport Simulation and Rendering System

While ray tracing has become increasingly common and path tracing is well understood by now, a major challenge lies in crafting an easy-to-use and efficient system implementing these technologies. Following a purely physically-based paradigm while still allowing for artistic workflows, the Iray light transport simulation and rendering system allows for rendering complex scenes by the push of a button and thus makes accurate light transport simulation widely available. In this document we discuss the challenges and implementation choices that follow from our primary design decisions, demonstrating that such a rendering system can be made a practical, scalable, and efficient real-world application that has been adopted by various companies across many fields and is in use by many industry professionals today

Application-Directed DVFS using Multiple Clock Domains on Graphics Hardware

As handheld devices have become increasingly popular, powerful programmable graphics hardware for mobile and handheld devices has been deployed. While many resources on mobile devices are limited, the predominant problem for mobile devices is their limited battery power. Several techniques have been proposed to increase the energy efficiency of mobile applications and improve battery life. In this thesis, we propose a new dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) on Graphics Processing Units (GPU). In most cases, cues within the graphics appli- cation can be used to predict portions of a GPU that will be used or unused when the application is run. We partition the GPU into six clock domains that can be clocked at different rates. Specifically, each domain it has its own voltage and frequency set- ting based on its predicted workload to save energy without reducing applications frame rates. In addition, we propose an signature-based algorithm for predicting the workload offered to our six clock domains by a given application to decide voltage and frequency settings. We conduct experiments and compare the results of our new signature based workload prediction algorithm with some other traditional interval based workload prediction algorithms. Our results show that our signature-based prediction can save 30-50% energy without afecting application frame rates

Shaping the Future of Animation towards Role of 3D Simulation Technology in Animation Film and Television

The application of 3D simulation technology has revolutionized the field of animation film and television art, providing new possibilities and creative opportunities for visual storytelling. This research aims to explore the various aspects of applying 3D simulation technology in animation film and television art. It examines how 3D simulation technology enhances the creation of realistic characters, environments, and special effects, contributing to immersive and captivating storytelling experiences. The research also investigates the technical aspects of integrating 3D cloud simulation technology into the animation production pipeline, including modeling, texturing, rigging, and animation techniques. This paper explores the application of these optimization algorithms in the context of cloud-based 3D environments, focusing on enhancing the efficiency and performance of 3D simulations. Black Widow and Spider Monkey Optimization can be used to optimize the placement and distribution of 3D assets in cloud storage systems, improving data access and retrieval times. The algorithms can also optimize the scheduling of rendering tasks in cloud-based rendering pipelines, leading to more efficient and cost-effective rendering processes. The integration of 3D cloud environments and optimization algorithms enables real-time optimization and adaptation of 3D simulations. This allows for dynamic adjustments of simulation parameters based on changing conditions, resulting in improved accuracy and responsiveness. Moreover, it explores the impact of 3D cloud simulation technology on the artistic process, examining how it influences the artistic vision, aesthetics, and narrative possibilities in animation film and television. The research findings highlight the advantages and challenges of using 3D simulation technology in animation, shedding light on its potential future developments and its role in shaping the future of animation film and television art

Crowd simulation and visualization

Large-scale simulation and visualization are essential topics in areas as different as sociology, physics, urbanism, training, entertainment among others. This kind of systems requires a vast computational power and memory resources commonly available in High Performance Computing HPC platforms. Currently, the most potent clusters have heterogeneous architectures with hundreds of thousands and even millions of cores. The industry trends inferred that exascale clusters would have thousands of millions. The technical challenges for simulation and visualization process in the exascale era are intertwined with difficulties in other areas of research, including storage, communication, programming models and hardware. For this reason, it is necessary prototyping, testing, and deployment a variety of approaches to address the technical challenges identified and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each proposed solution. The focus of this research is interactive large-scale crowd simulation and visualization. To exploit to the maximum the capacity of the current HPC infrastructure and be prepared to take advantage of the next generation. The project develops a new approach to scale crowd simulation and visualization on heterogeneous computing cluster using a task-based technique. Its main characteristic is hardware agnostic. It abstracts the difficulties that imply the use of heterogeneous architectures like memory management, scheduling, communications, and synchronization — facilitating development, maintenance, and scalability. With the goal of flexibility and take advantage of computing resources as best as possible, the project explores different configurations to connect the simulation with the visualization engine. This kind of system has an essential use in emergencies. Therefore, urban scenes were implemented as realistic as possible; in this way, users will be ready to face real events. Path planning for large-scale crowds is a challenge to solve, due to the inherent dynamism in the scenes and vast search space. A new path-finding algorithm was developed. It has a hierarchical approach which offers different advantages: it divides the search space reducing the problem complexity, it can obtain a partial path instead of wait for the complete one, which allows a character to start moving and compute the rest asynchronously. It can reprocess only a part if necessary with different levels of abstraction. A case study is presented for a crowd simulation in urban scenarios. Geolocated data are used, they were produced by mobile devices to predict individual and crowd behavior and detect abnormal situations in the presence of specific events. It was also address the challenge of combining all these individual’s location with a 3D rendering of the urban environment. The data processing and simulation approach are computationally expensive and time-critical, it relies thus on a hybrid Cloud-HPC architecture to produce an efficient solution. Within the project, new models of behavior based on data analytics were developed. It was developed the infrastructure to be able to consult various data sources such as social networks, government agencies or transport companies such as Uber. Every time there is more geolocation data available and better computation resources which allow performing analysis of greater depth, this lays the foundations to improve the simulation models of current crowds. The use of simulations and their visualization allows to observe and organize the crowds in real time. The analysis before, during and after daily mass events can reduce the risks and associated logistics costs.La simulación y visualización a gran escala son temas esenciales en áreas tan diferentes como la sociología, la física, el urbanismo, la capacitación, el entretenimiento, entre otros. Este tipo de sistemas requiere una gran capacidad de cómputo y recursos de memoria comúnmente disponibles en las plataformas de computo de alto rendimiento. Actualmente, los equipos más potentes tienen arquitecturas heterogéneas con cientos de miles e incluso millones de núcleos. Las tendencias de la industria infieren que los equipos en la era exascale tendran miles de millones. Los desafíos técnicos en el proceso de simulación y visualización en la era exascale se entrelazan con dificultades en otras áreas de investigación, incluidos almacenamiento, comunicación, modelos de programación y hardware. Por esta razón, es necesario crear prototipos, probar y desplegar una variedad de enfoques para abordar los desafíos técnicos identificados y evaluar las ventajas y desventajas de cada solución propuesta. El foco de esta investigación es la visualización y simulación interactiva de multitudes a gran escala. Aprovechar al máximo la capacidad de la infraestructura actual y estar preparado para aprovechar la próxima generación. El proyecto desarrolla un nuevo enfoque para escalar la simulación y visualización de multitudes en un clúster de computo heterogéneo utilizando una técnica basada en tareas. Su principal característica es que es hardware agnóstico. Abstrae las dificultades que implican el uso de arquitecturas heterogéneas como la administración de memoria, las comunicaciones y la sincronización, lo que facilita el desarrollo, el mantenimiento y la escalabilidad. Con el objetivo de flexibilizar y aprovechar los recursos informáticos lo mejor posible, el proyecto explora diferentes configuraciones para conectar la simulación con el motor de visualización. Este tipo de sistemas tienen un uso esencial en emergencias. Por lo tanto, se implementaron escenas urbanas lo más realistas posible, de esta manera los usuarios estarán listos para enfrentar eventos reales. La planificación de caminos para multitudes a gran escala es un desafío a resolver, debido al dinamismo inherente en las escenas y el vasto espacio de búsqueda. Se desarrolló un nuevo algoritmo de búsqueda de caminos. Tiene un enfoque jerárquico que ofrece diferentes ventajas: divide el espacio de búsqueda reduciendo la complejidad del problema, puede obtener una ruta parcial en lugar de esperar a la completa, lo que permite que un personaje comience a moverse y calcule el resto de forma asíncrona, puede reprocesar solo una parte si es necesario con diferentes niveles de abstracción. Se presenta un caso de estudio para una simulación de multitud en escenarios urbanos. Se utilizan datos geolocalizados producidos por dispositivos móviles para predecir el comportamiento individual y público y detectar situaciones anormales en presencia de eventos específicos. También se aborda el desafío de combinar la ubicación de todos estos individuos con una representación 3D del entorno urbano. Dentro del proyecto, se desarrollaron nuevos modelos de comportamiento basados ¿¿en el análisis de datos. Se creo la infraestructura para poder consultar varias fuentes de datos como redes sociales, agencias gubernamentales o empresas de transporte como Uber. Cada vez hay más datos de geolocalización disponibles y mejores recursos de cómputo que permiten realizar un análisis de mayor profundidad, esto sienta las bases para mejorar los modelos de simulación de las multitudes actuales. El uso de simulaciones y su visualización permite observar y organizar las multitudes en tiempo real. El análisis antes, durante y después de eventos multitudinarios diarios puede reducir los riesgos y los costos logísticos asociadosPostprint (published version

Ubiquitous Scalable Graphics: An End-to-End Framework using Wavelets

Advances in ubiquitous displays and wireless communications have fueled the emergence of exciting mobile graphics applications including 3D virtual product catalogs, 3D maps, security monitoring systems and mobile games. Current trends that use cameras to capture geometry, material reflectance and other graphics elements means that very high resolution inputs is accessible to render extremely photorealistic scenes. However, captured graphics content can be many gigabytes in size, and must be simplified before they can be used on small mobile devices, which have limited resources, such as memory, screen size and battery energy. Scaling and converting graphics content to a suitable rendering format involves running several software tools, and selecting the best resolution for target mobile device is often done by trial and error, which all takes time. Wireless errors can also affect transmitted content and aggressive compression is needed for low-bandwidth wireless networks. Most rendering algorithms are currently optimized for visual realism and speed, but are not resource or energy efficient on mobile device. This dissertation focuses on the improvement of rendering performance by reducing the impacts of these problems with UbiWave, an end-to-end Framework to enable real time mobile access to high resolution graphics using wavelets. The framework tackles the issues including simplification, transmission, and resource efficient rendering of graphics content on mobile device based on wavelets by utilizing 1) a Perceptual Error Metric (PoI) for automatically computing the best resolution of graphics content for a given mobile display to eliminate guesswork and save resources, 2) Unequal Error Protection (UEP) to improve the resilience to wireless errors, 3) an Energy-efficient Adaptive Real-time Rendering (EARR) heuristic to balance energy consumption, rendering speed and image quality and 4) an Energy-efficient Streaming Technique. The results facilitate a new class of mobile graphics application which can gracefully adapt the lowest acceptable rendering resolution to the wireless network conditions and the availability of resources and battery energy on mobile device adaptively

Spatial Sound Rendering – A Survey

Simulating propagation of sound and audio rendering can improve the sense of realism and the immersion both in complex acoustic environments and dynamic virtual scenes. In studies of sound auralization, the focus has always been on room acoustics modeling, but most of the same methods are also applicable in the construction of virtual environments such as those developed to facilitate computer gaming, cognitive research, and simulated training scenarios. This paper is a review of state-of-the-art techniques that are based on acoustic principles that apply not only to real rooms but also in 3D virtual environments. The paper also highlights the need to expand the field of immersive sound in a web based browsing environment, because, despite the interest and many benefits, few developments seem to have taken place within this context. Moreover, the paper includes a list of the most effective algorithms used for modelling spatial sound propagation and reports their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, the paper emphasizes in the evaluation of these proposed works

Neural Sparse Voxel Fields

Photo-realistic free-viewpoint rendering of real-world scenes using classical computer graphics techniques is challenging, because it requires the difficult step of capturing detailed appearance and geometry models. Recent studies have demonstrated promising results by learning scene representations that implicitly encode both geometry and appearance without 3D supervision. However, existing approaches in practice often show blurry renderings caused by the limited network capacity or the difficulty in finding accurate intersections of camera rays with the scene geometry. Synthesizing high-resolution imagery from these representations often requires time-consuming optical ray marching. In this work, we introduce Neural Sparse Voxel Fields (NSVF), a new neural scene representation for fast and high-quality free-viewpoint rendering. NSVF defines a set of voxel-bounded implicit fields organized in a sparse voxel octree to model local properties in each cell. We progressively learn the underlying voxel structures with a differentiable ray-marching operation from only a set of posed RGB images. With the sparse voxel octree structure, rendering novel views can be accelerated by skipping the voxels containing no relevant scene content. Our method is typically over 10 times faster than the state-of-the-art (namely, NeRF(Mildenhall et al., 2020)) at inference time while achieving higher quality results. Furthermore, by utilizing an explicit sparse voxel representation, our method can easily be applied to scene editing and scene composition. We also demonstrate several challenging tasks, including multi-scene learning, free-viewpoint rendering of a moving human, and large-scale scene rendering. Code and data are available at our website: https://github.com/facebookresearch/NSVF.Comment: 20 pages, in progres