Rendering Stereoscopic Augmented Reality Scenes with Occlusions Using Depth from Stereo and Texture Mapping

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) is commonly used in the construction industry to visualize proposed structures and/or operations in their real world environment as it greatly enhances the realism of the viewing experience without having to construct 3D models of complex real world scenes. In order to achieve convincing scenes in AR applications, the virtual objects should be correctly occluded by the real objects present in the scene, which is a non trivial problem that involves specialized equipment to capture depth information about the real scene. This paper presents a novel methodology that allows for the stereoscopic rendering of AR scenes with the correct occlusion of the virtual objects. Two pictures of the real scene that are captured simultaneously from viewpoints with a horizontal baseline separation of 1m are used to obtain both the stereoscopic images as well as the depth information of the occluding objects in the real scene. Potential applications of this methodology include its use in the creating and rendering engaging representations of the AR scene being visualized, by affording the user the perception of depth in the scene and as novel means to visualize 3D CAD and BIM models in their proposed/ existing settings in the real world.