From: mogal@deadhead.asd.sgi.com (Joshua Mogal)
Subject: Re: TECH: Depth of field in rendering
Date: 15 Jun 1993 22:58:56 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.



In article <1v3akcINN5qd@news.u.washington.edu>,
diego@minerva.st.dsi.unimi.it (Diego Montefusco) writes:

|> 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.

Well,

I would say that there has been some work along those lines...SGI
introduced the Accumulation Buffer some 3 years ago capable of
real-time Depth-Of-Field and Motion Blur simulation on the VGX
platform. This is also supported on the Crimson VGXT and
RealityEngine, and Onyx VTX and RealityEngine2 platforms =-)

Cheers,

Josh

BTW, we're talking about machines starting around $70K (not THAT
high-end).

-- 


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