From: diego@minerva.st.dsi.unimi.it (Diego Montefusco)
Subject: TECH: Depth of field in rendering
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 93 07:44:32 CET



Hello.

I was asking myself why the experience of using an HMD is so
disappointing (at least to me!), why it feels so "un-natural". Of
course there's the low resolution of the displays I've used, there is
also the narrow field of view...

BUT I also thought that you don't get something we are very used to:
the depth of field. I was wondering if anybody has worked in this
direction, if it is possible to render, NOT WITH RAY TRACING (i.e.
with the current flat, gouraud or phong shading used nowadays in VR
systems) the depth of field, or if anyone has investigated
(theorically) whether this could be useful or not.

This is not to be confused with a selective higher-quality rendering
where (in the SCREEN PLANE, not in the SCENE VOLUME) the user is
looking at. While this automatically "blurs" the image elsewhere, it
is not what I am talking about... One surprise could be that THIS
might be a good substitution for depth of field, but who knows??

Beyond the problem of making the rendering subsystem more complex (if
it is possible at all), this would imply the use of TWO eye-tracking
systems, to determine where (x, y AND z) the user is looking at, most
of all at which depth she's focusing her attention. I don't think you
can get 3D info from just one tracker, but, again, I don't know for
sure.

We're, of course, talking about a *VERY* hi-end system here... Anyone
from WPAFB has to say anything?

Ciao,

Diego

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   | Diego Montefusco |         Computer Science Department          | 
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