Smoothing region boundaries in variable depth mapping for real-time stereoscopic images

We believe the need for stereoscopic image generation methods that allow simple, high quality content creation\udcontinues to be a key problem limiting the widespread up-take of 3D displays. We present new algorithms for\udcreating real time stereoscopic images that provide increased control to content creators over the mapping of\uddepth from scene to displayed image.\udPreviously we described a Three Region, variable depth mapping, algorithm for stereoscopic image generation.\udThis allows different regions within a scene to be represented by different ranges of perceived depth in the final\udimage. An unresolved issue was that this approach can create a visible discontinuity for smooth objects crossing\udregion boundaries. In this paper we describe two new Multi-Region algorithms to address this problem: boundary\udsmoothing using additional sub-regions and scaling scene geometry to smoothly vary depth mapping.\udWe present real time implementations of the Three-Region and the new Multi-Region algorithms for OpenGL\udto demonstrate the visual appearance of the results. We discuss the applicability and performance of each\udapproach for rendering real time stereoscopic images and propose a simple modification to the standard graphics\udpipeline to better support these algorithms