Temporal Coherence Methods in Real-Time Rendering

Information

• Publication Type: Journal Paper (without talk)
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Rendering and Modeling
• Date: December 2012
• ISSN: 1467-8659
• Journal: Computer Graphics Forum
• Number: 8
• Volume: 31
• Pages: 2378 – 2408
• Keywords: remote rendering; sampling, perception-based rendering, occlusion culling, non-photo-realistic rendering, level-of-detail, large data visualization, image-based rendering, global illumination, frame interpolation, anti-aliasing, shadows, streaming, temporal coherance, upsampling

Abstract

Nowadays, there is a strong trend towards rendering to higher-resolution displays and at high frame rates. This development aims at delivering more detail and better accuracy, but it also comes at a significant cost. Although graphics cards continue to evolve with an ever-increasing amount of computational power, the speed gain is easily counteracted by increasingly complex and sophisticated shading computations. For real-time applications, the direct consequence is that image resolution and temporal resolution are often the first candidates to bow to the performance constraints (e.g., although full HD is possible, PS3 and XBox often render at lower resolutions).

In order to achieve high-quality rendering at a lower cost, one can exploit temporal coherence (TC). The underlying observation is that a higher resolution and frame rate do not necessarily imply a much higher workload, but a larger amount of redundancy and a higher potential for amortizing rendering over several frames. In this survey, we investigate methods that make use of this principle and provide practical and theoretical advice on how to exploit temporal coherence for performance optimization. These methods not only allow incorporating more computationally intensive shading effects into many existing applications, but also offer exciting opportunities for extending high-end graphics applications to lower-spec consumer-level hardware. To this end, we first introduce the notion and main concepts of TC, including an overview of historical methods. We then describe a general approach, image-space reprojection, with several implementation algorithms that facilitate reusing shading information across adjacent frames. We also discuss data-reuse quality and performance related to reprojection techniques. Finally, in the second half of this survey, we demonstrate various applications that exploit TC in real-time rendering.

Additional Files and Images

Weblinks

• http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8659.2012.03075.x/abstract

BibTeX

@article{SCHERZER-2012-TCM,
  title =      "Temporal Coherence Methods in Real-Time Rendering",
  author =     "Daniel Scherzer and Lei Yang and Oliver Mattausch and Diego
               Nehab and Pedro V. Sander and Michael Wimmer and Elmar
               Eisemann",
  year =       "2012",
  abstract =   "Nowadays, there is a strong trend towards rendering to
               higher-resolution displays and at high frame rates. This
               development aims at delivering more detail and better
               accuracy, but it also comes at a significant cost. Although
               graphics cards continue to evolve with an ever-increasing
               amount of computational power, the speed gain is easily
               counteracted by increasingly complex and sophisticated
               shading computations. For real-time applications, the direct
               consequence is that image resolution and temporal resolution
               are often the first candidates to bow to the performance
               constraints (e.g., although full HD is possible, PS3 and
               XBox often render at lower resolutions).  In order to
               achieve high-quality rendering at a lower cost, one can
               exploit temporal coherence (TC). The underlying observation
               is that a higher resolution and frame rate do not
               necessarily imply a much higher workload, but a larger
               amount of redundancy and a higher potential for amortizing
               rendering over several frames. In this survey, we
               investigate methods that make use of this principle and
               provide practical and theoretical advice on how to exploit
               temporal coherence for performance optimization. These
               methods not only allow incorporating more computationally
               intensive shading effects into many existing applications,
               but also offer exciting opportunities for extending high-end
               graphics applications to lower-spec consumer-level hardware.
               To this end, we first introduce the notion and main concepts
               of TC, including an overview of historical methods. We then
               describe a general approach, image-space reprojection, with
               several implementation algorithms that facilitate reusing
               shading information across adjacent frames. We also discuss
               data-reuse quality and performance related to reprojection
               techniques. Finally, in the second half of this survey, we
               demonstrate various applications that exploit TC in
               real-time rendering. ",
  month =      dec,
  issn =       "1467-8659",
  journal =    "Computer Graphics Forum",
  number =     "8",
  volume =     "31",
  pages =      "2378--2408",
  keywords =   "remote rendering; sampling, perception-based rendering,
               occlusion culling, non-photo-realistic rendering,
               level-of-detail, large data visualization, image-based
               rendering, global illumination, frame interpolation,
               anti-aliasing, shadows, streaming, temporal coherance,
               upsampling",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2012/SCHERZER-2012-TCM/",
}