Virtual reality becomes more real

Scientists from Skoltech ADASE (Advanced Data Analytics in Science and Engineering) lab have found a way to enhance depth map resolution, which should make virtual reality and computer graphics more realistic. They presented their research results at the prestigious International Conference on Computer Vision 2019 in Korea.

When taking a photo, we capture visual information about objects around us, with the different pixels in the image containing the colors of the respective parts of the object. Depth maps are photos that capture spatial information and their pixels contain the distances from the camera to the respective points in space.

Applications such as computer graphics and augmented or virtual reality use spatial information to reconstruct a 3D object's shape and, for instance, display it on a computer screen.

One of the issues of depth cameras is that their resolution, that is, the spatial frequency of distance measurements, is insufficient for restoration of high quality object's shape, making the virtual reconstructions look all but unrealistic.

The researchers are faced with the challenge of finding a way to obtain high-resolution depth maps from low-resolution depth maps. Scientists from Skoltech ADASE lab have proposed to ssess the reconstruction quality using a novel method closely related to human perception.

Training an artificial neural network with this quality assessment technique produces a depth map super-resolution method that largely outperforms the existing methods in the visual quality of the result.

"When dealing with super-resolved depth maps, one should assess the quality of the result, first, to compare the performance of different methods, and second, to use it as feedback for "further improvements.

The easiest way is to compare the result to some reference. The overwhelming majority of works on depth map super-resolution use for this purpose mean difference between super-resolved and reference depth values. By no means does this method reflect the visual quality of the 3D reconstruction obtained from the super-resolved depth map," explains the first author of the study, Oleg Voynov.

"We propose an altogether different method which leverages the human perception of the difference between visualizations of the 3D reconstructions obtained from super-resolved and reference depth maps. The graphics you obtain with this method looks highly realistic. We hope that our method will find extensive use," says one of the developers, Alexey Artemov.

Related Links
Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech)
Space Technology News - Applications and Research

Tweet

Thanks for being there;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.

SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5+ Billed Monthly

paypal only

SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once

credit card or paypal

DARPA picks teams for Virtual Air Combat Competition
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 23, 2019
DARPA has selected eight teams to compete in the AlphaDogfight Trials, a virtual competition designed to demonstrate advanced artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that can perform simulated within-visual-range air combat maneuvering, colloquially known as a dogfight. The Trials aim to energize and expand a base of AI developers and potential proposers prior to an anticipated algorithm-development solicitation to be released under DARPA's Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program. Announced earlier thi ... read more