A real-time low-latency hardware light-field renderer

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of an architecture for interactively viewing static light fields with very low latency. The system was deliberately over engineered to specifications much tighter than expected necessary to eliminate perceptible latency. This allowed us to relax the specifications to the point at which human users began to detect latency artifacts. We found empirically that when interacting with a light field, human users began to notice latency artifacts when the total system latency is approximately 15 ms. Although the architecture may not be used in practice, this result should prove fundamental for designers of future interactive graphics systems.

Perceptual sensitivity to head tracking latency in virtual environments with varying degrees of scene complexity

“…Regan et al [1999] found 70.7% latency thresholds averaging 15 ms for a specialized non-immersing CRT display. Assuming Gaussian psychometric functions and zero response bias for twointerval forced-choice judgments with balanced presentation order, the 70.7% threshold from Regan et al [1999] can be equated with a JND of 18.6 ms. Allison et al [2001] observed on the other hand that for large virtual objects occupying the full Head Mounted Display (HMD) Field-of-View (FOV), 50% thresholds for perceived image instability (oscillopsia) were found to be 180-320 ms depending on head motion velocity. This threshold indicates the latency level at which observers were equally likely as not to say the image was unstable and represents their average response bias or preference.…”

Action-perception patterns in virtual ball bouncing: Combating system latency and tracking functional validity

“…Despite the availability of several software (Garret, 2002) and hardware (Regan et al, 1999) optimization packages, it is impossible to completely cancel ETEL in a VE. The unavoidable latency may have detrimental effects both on the user's sense of immersion, as well as on her/his behavior.…”

Ultra low latency dataflow renderer

“…Regan et al constructed a very low latency 3D light field renderer [8]. The architecture of their renderer is similar to ours, and their goal was also to design a renderer for investigating latency in human computer interaction.…”

“…FPGAs have been used for real-time rendering before, but with limited scope and tight vertical integration (e.g. [8], [9]). The dataflow computing paradigm and tools such as Maxeler's MaxCompiler are making it possible to construct image generators with entirely novel architectures, with similar complexity of programming as traditional GPUs [10].…”