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Implicit and foveated techniques for Real-time computer graphics rendering

Polychronakis Andreas

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Summary

This dissertation presents innovative approaches designed to enhance the efficiency of real-time rendering techniques, focusing on foveated rendering and sphere tracing of Signed Distance Functions (SDFs). The research addresses the limitations of existing rendering methods that rely heavily on low-level image features and often suffer from artifacts when optimizing computational resource allocation. First, we present an emulated foveated path tracing framework that establishes thresholds for imperceptible image manipulations based on user gaze. Our perceptual studies yield varying eccentricity thresholds for foveated performance, highlighting the impact of experimental methodologies on user sensitivity to visual changes. The results indicate potential computational complexity reductions of at least 2x-3x in path tracing performance through foveated rendering methods.Second, we introduce the Foveated Inverted Pyramid Rendering (FIPR) system, which optimizes rendering quality based on user gaze. By employing a multi-scale inverted pyramid structure, we leverage low-resolution renderings to incrementally refine ray distances, dramatically reducing the overall ray step count and enabling efficient rendering of complex scenes in virtual reality. Our method supports 16x super-sample anti-aliasing while maintaining imperceptible image quality transitions even in peripheral vision. Lastly, we develop a novel rapid rendering pipeline for sphere tracing SDFs that significantly reduces the overall ray step count using ultra-low resolution renderings while minimizing artifacts. By employing a single low-resolution buffer and scaling SDFs within this buffer, our method ensures the visibility of small features while enabling earlier ray termination for high-cost surface edges. This approach yields a substantial performance improvement, achieving speedups exceeding 3x compared to traditional methods. Collectively, these contributions advance the field of real-time graphics rendering, providing valuable insights into optimizing rendering techniques while enhancing the user experience in interactive applications such as gaming and simulations.

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