Perception-driven global illumination and rendering computation

We investigate applications of the Visible Difference Predictor (VDP) to steer global illumination computation. We use the VDP to monitor the progression of computation as a function of time for major global illumination algorithms. Based on the results obtained, we propose a novel global illumination algorithm which is a hybrid of stochastic (density estimation) and deterministic (adaptive mesh refinement) techniques used in an optimized sequence to reduce the differences between the intermediate and final images as predicted by the VDP. Also, the VDP is applied to decide upon stopping conditions for global illumination simulation, when further continuation of computation does not contribute to perceivable changes in die quality of the resulting.