Real-Time Global Illumination In The Cave

Global illumination in VR applications remains an elusive goal. While it potentially has a positive impact on presence, the significant real-time computation and integration complexities involved have been stumbling blocks. In this paper we present recent and ongoing work in the Virtual Light Field paradigm for global illumination as a solution to this problem. We discuss its suitability for real-time VR applications and detail recent work in integrating it with the XVR system for real-time GPU-based rendering in a CAVE (TM). This rendering method achieves real-time rendering of L(SI D)* E solutions in time independent of illumination complexity and largely independent of geoinetric complexity.