Efficient Path Tracer for the Presence of Mobile Virtual Reality

Global illumination can achieve photorealistic rendering of mobile virtual reality (VR), and can naturally express shadows, caustics, and color bleeding, ultimatelyenhancing users' sense of immersion and presence. However, it has high computational complexity because it must simulate all rays to every position in two virtual planes. In addition,the majority of mobile devices have low performance compared to desktops, which makes it difficult to achieve real-time performance in global illumination. This study proposes novel algorithms to realize global illumination for mobile-based VR. The proposed algorithms utilize points wherein many objects are rendered twice from different camera positions, and most recent mobile devices have both a CPU with heterogeneous cores and a GPU. The proposed algorithms help to increase CPU utilization from approximately 13% to 80%, rendering performance by 14.69%,and similarity with the ground-truth image by 39.06%,while decreasing noise by 7.05% at the initial low-sampled status.

Automated summary

Global illumination in mobile virtual reality can achieve photorealistic rendering but faces challenges due to high computational complexity and limited performance of mobile devices. This study proposes novel algorithms that improve CPU utilization and rendering performance while reducing noise.