Foveated Stereoscopic Display for the Visualization of Detailed Virtual Environments

Abstract

We present a new method for the stereoscopic display of complex virtual environments using a foveated arrangement of four images. The system runs on four rendering nodes and four projectors, for the fovea and periphery in each eye view. The use of high-resolution insets in a foveated configuration is well known. However, its extension to projector-based stereoscopic displays raises a specific issue: the visible boundary between fovea and periphery present in each eye creates a stereoscopic cue that may conflict with the perceived depth of the underlying scene. A previous solution to this problem displaces the boundary in the images to ensure that it is always positioned over stereoscopically corresponding scene locations. The new method proposed here addresses the same problem, but by relaxing the stereo matching criteria and reformulating the problem as one of spatial partitioning, all computations are performed locally on each node, and require a small and fixed amount of post-rendering processing, independent of scene complexity. We discuss this solution and present an OpenGL implementation; we also discuss acceleration techniques using culling and fragments, and illustrate the use of the method on a complex 3D textured model of a Byzantine crypt built using laser range imaging and digital photography.