Automated Octree LOD Based on Human Perception Metrics

Sammanfattning

Level of detail (LOD) systems has long been a central concept within the field of computer graphics. By selectively allocating detail only to where it is necessary, the cost of rendering virtual objects can be greatly decreased. The usefulness of an LOD system is closely tied to the metrics used to evaluate how to distribute detail, as getting these wrong can lead to visual artifacts or rendering detail which is not visible to an observer. To offset this, researchers have investigated how we can optimize these systems by leveraging human perception to allocate detail based on if the detail is perceivable. This paper explores the use of LOD systems in the context of virtual terrains, a common use case were LOD systems have seen much prior use, and delves into how such systems can be optimized further by leveraging human perception. The paper presents a method centered around the use of octrees, a data structure used to partition and compress volumetric data, alongside spatial frequency, a concept related to human perception which provides insight into where visual stimulus borders on being percievable, to dynamically generate transition distances for an LOD system. The presented method is evaluated using a terrain generator created in the Unity engine alongside Nvidia ꟻLIP, a tool for evaluating differences in images based on human perception metrics. Results indicate that the presented method did lead to a decrease in resource cost when generating terrain when compared to some other methods while the ability to optimize LOD transition distances based on silhouette-background contrast remains uncertain.