5,337 research outputs found
Construction and Evaluation of an Ultra Low Latency Frameless Renderer for VR.
© 2016 IEEE.Latency-the delay between a users action and the response to this action-is known to be detrimental to virtual reality. Latency is typically considered to be a discrete value characterising a delay, constant in time and space-but this characterisation is incomplete. Latency changes across the display during scan-out, and how it does so is dependent on the rendering approach used. In this study, we present an ultra-low latency real-time ray-casting renderer for virtual reality, implemented on an FPGA. Our renderer has a latency of 1 ms from tracker to pixel. Its frameless nature means that the region of the display with the lowest latency immediately follows the scan-beam. This is in contrast to frame-based systems such as those using typical GPUs, for which the latency increases as scan-out proceeds. Using a series of high and low speed videos of our system in use, we confirm its latency of 1 ms. We examine how the renderer performs when driving a traditional sequential scan-out display on a readily available HMO, the Oculus Rift OK2. We contrast this with an equivalent apparatus built using a GPU. Using captured human head motion and a set of image quality measures, we assess the ability of these systems to faithfully recreate the stimuli of an ideal virtual reality system-one with a zero latency tracker, renderer and display running at 1 kHz. Finally, we examine the results of these quality measures, and how each rendering approach is affected by velocity of movement and display persistence. We find that our system, with a lower average latency, can more faithfully draw what the ideal virtual reality system would. Further, we find that with low display persistence, the sensitivity to velocity of both systems is lowered, but that it is much lower for ours
Neural View-Interpolation for Sparse Light Field Video
We suggest representing light field (LF) videos as "one-off" neural networks (NN), i.e., a learned mapping from view-plus-time coordinates to high-resolution color values, trained on sparse views. Initially, this sounds like a bad idea for three main reasons: First, a NN LF will likely have less quality than a same-sized pixel basis representation. Second, only few training data, e.g., 9 exemplars per frame are available for sparse LF videos. Third, there is no generalization across LFs, but across view and time instead. Consequently, a network needs to be trained for each LF video. Surprisingly, these problems can turn into substantial advantages: Other than the linear pixel basis, a NN has to come up with a compact, non-linear i.e., more intelligent, explanation of color, conditioned on the sparse view and time coordinates. As observed for many NN however, this representation now is interpolatable: if the image output for sparse view coordinates is plausible, it is for all intermediate, continuous coordinates as well. Our specific network architecture involves a differentiable occlusion-aware warping step, which leads to a compact set of trainable parameters and consequently fast learning and fast execution
Using image morphing for memory-efficient impostor rendering on GPU
Real-time rendering of large animated crowds consisting thousands of virtual humans is important for several applications including simulations, games and interactive walkthroughs; but cannot be performed using complex polygonal models at interactive frame rates. For that reason, several methods using large numbers of pre-computed image-based representations, which are called as impostors, have been proposed. These methods take the advantage of existing programmable graphics hardware to compensate the computational expense while maintaining the visual fidelity. Making the number of different virtual humans, which can be rendered in real-time, not restricted anymore by the required computational power but by the texture memory consumed for the variety and discretization of their animations. In this work, we proposed an alternative method that reduces the memory consumption by generating compelling intermediate textures using image-morphing techniques. In order to demonstrate the preserved perceptual quality of animations, where half of the key-frames were rendered using the proposed methodology, we have implemented the system using the graphical processing unit and obtained promising results at interactive frame rates
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Stereometric Design for Desk-Top SFF Fabrication
Solid Freeform Fabrication (SFF) technologies refer to the fabrication of physical parts directly from
computer based solid models described by STL (Stereo Lithography) or VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling
Language) files generated by Computer-Aided Design (CAD) systems. Most of the SFF processes produce parts
by building them layer by layer using a row by row pattern, though it is possible to build the part using other
patterns. The SFF technology represents a challenge to designers who, in addition to making decisions
concerning optimum shape and functionality of the entire part, have'to take under consideration several other
manufacturing factors. These factors cover a wide range of technical issues such as Computer-Aided Design
model generation, part description and model slicing files, laser path files, precision of part design, rendering
patterns, manufacturing tolerances, thermal expansion and residual stress phenomena.
This paper investigates the effect of rendering patterns on the integrity, material characteristics and
mechanical properties of the parts prepared by a desk-top SFF device using diode lasers. Fe - Bronze (Cu - Sn)
premixed metal powders were used as the starting material. The particle size was about 100 /lm to 200 /lm.
Density, tensile strength and microstructure of the parts prepared using different rendering patterns were
characterized. The results were analyzed to seek optimal rendering patterns. It was noticed that the samples
were strong along the laser scanning direction, while they were weak perpendicular to the scanning direction.
These results suggest that the laser scanning patterns should be designed to minimize the warping and maximize
the strength of the part in the direction depending on the part's function.Mechanical Engineerin
MoSculp: Interactive Visualization of Shape and Time
We present a system that allows users to visualize complex human motion via
3D motion sculptures---a representation that conveys the 3D structure swept by
a human body as it moves through space. Given an input video, our system
computes the motion sculptures and provides a user interface for rendering it
in different styles, including the options to insert the sculpture back into
the original video, render it in a synthetic scene or physically print it.
To provide this end-to-end workflow, we introduce an algorithm that estimates
that human's 3D geometry over time from a set of 2D images and develop a
3D-aware image-based rendering approach that embeds the sculpture back into the
scene. By automating the process, our system takes motion sculpture creation
out of the realm of professional artists, and makes it applicable to a wide
range of existing video material.
By providing viewers with 3D information, motion sculptures reveal space-time
motion information that is difficult to perceive with the naked eye, and allow
viewers to interpret how different parts of the object interact over time. We
validate the effectiveness of this approach with user studies, finding that our
motion sculpture visualizations are significantly more informative about motion
than existing stroboscopic and space-time visualization methods.Comment: UIST 2018. Project page: http://mosculp.csail.mit.edu
3D modeling of indoor environments by a mobile platform with a laser scanner and panoramic camera
One major challenge of 3DTV is content acquisition. Here, we present a method to acquire a realistic, visually convincing D model of indoor environments based on a mobile platform that is equipped with a laser range scanner and a panoramic camera. The data of the 2D laser scans are used to solve the simultaneous lo- calization and mapping problem and to extract walls. Textures for walls and floor are built from the images of a calibrated panoramic camera. Multiresolution blending is used to hide seams in the gen- erated textures. The scene is further enriched by 3D-geometry cal- culated from a graph cut stereo technique. We present experimental results from a moderately large real environment.
Unwind: Interactive Fish Straightening
The ScanAllFish project is a large-scale effort to scan all the world's
33,100 known species of fishes. It has already generated thousands of
volumetric CT scans of fish species which are available on open access
platforms such as the Open Science Framework. To achieve a scanning rate
required for a project of this magnitude, many specimens are grouped together
into a single tube and scanned all at once. The resulting data contain many
fish which are often bent and twisted to fit into the scanner. Our system,
Unwind, is a novel interactive visualization and processing tool which
extracts, unbends, and untwists volumetric images of fish with minimal user
interaction. Our approach enables scientists to interactively unwarp these
volumes to remove the undesired torque and bending using a piecewise-linear
skeleton extracted by averaging isosurfaces of a harmonic function connecting
the head and tail of each fish. The result is a volumetric dataset of a
individual, straight fish in a canonical pose defined by the marine biologist
expert user. We have developed Unwind in collaboration with a team of marine
biologists: Our system has been deployed in their labs, and is presently being
used for dataset construction, biomechanical analysis, and the generation of
figures for scientific publication
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