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Realistic Real-Time Outdoor Rendering in Augmented
Reality
Hoshang Kolivand, Mohd Shahrizal Sunar*
MaGIC-X (Media and Games Innovation Centre of Excellence), UTM-IRDA Digital Media Centre, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor, Malaysia
Abstract
Realistic rendering techniques of outdoor Augmented Reality (AR) has been an attractive topic since the last two decades
considering the sizeable amount of publications in computer graphics. Realistic virtual objects in outdoor rendering AR
systems require sophisticated effects such as: shadows, daylight and interactions between sky colours and virtual as well as
real objects. A few realistic rendering techniques have been designed to overcome this obstacle, most of which are related
to non real-time rendering. However, the problem still remains, especially in outdoor rendering. This paper proposed a
much newer, unique technique to achieve realistic real-time outdoor rendering, while taking into account the interaction
between sky colours and objects in AR systems with respect to shadows in any specific location, date and time. This
approach involves three main phases, which cover different outdoor AR rendering requirements. Firstly, sky colour was
generated with respect to the position of the sun. Second step involves the shadow generation algorithm, Z-Partitioning:
Gaussian and Fog Shadow Maps (Z-GaF Shadow Maps). Lastly, a technique to integrate sky colours and shadows through its
effects on virtual objects in the AR system, is introduced. The experimental results reveal that the proposed technique has
significantly improved the realism of real-time outdoor AR rendering, thus solving the problem of realistic AR systems.
Citation: Kolivand H, Sunar MS (2014) Realistic Real-Time Outdoor Rendering in Augmented Reality. PLoS ONE 9(9): e108334. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334
Editor: Rongrong Ji, Xiamen University, China
Received February 25, 2014; Accepted August 26, 2014; Published September 30, 2014
Copyright: ß2014 Kolivand, Sunar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: The research paper was supported by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) using Exploratory Research Grant Scheme (ERGS) vot number
R.J130000.7828.4L092. Special thanks to Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) and Research Management Centre (RMC) for providing financial support of this
research. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
* Email: shahrizal@utm.com
Introduction
In contrast to indoor rendering, outdoor rendering consists of
more components such, for example: position of the sun, sky
colours, shadows, rainbows, haze, trees, grass and etc. This paper
begins, attempting a working definition for some of the more
important parameters for outdoor rendering. Position of the sun,
sky colours, shadows and interaction between the sky colours and
other objects are the more significant components when it comes
to outdoor environments. These factors are taken into account
because they are the prominent components of outdoor environ-
ments [1] [2].
Over the past two decades, Augmented Reality (AR) has
become one of the most enthralling topics, not only in computer
graphics but also in other fields [3] [4] [5], beckoning researchers
on obtaining greater results. In AR, realism can be achieved
through entering shadows as well as inducing interaction between
objects [6] [7] [8] [9].
In general, realistic augmented reality has been a critical point
in computer graphics before the turn of 21st century [10]. Here, to
produce a realistic virtual object in real outdoor environments,
position of the sun, sky colours, shadows and interaction between
sky colours and objects are taken into account. Figure 1 represents
the research area. The final focus area is shown as well as all open
issues in AR.
Studies concering sky colours and shadows are the main
resources for outdoor components using grammars with sets of
rules. Rendering outdoor components is studied for visualization
of natural scenes in different contexts: animators, ecosystem
simulations, video games, design architectures and flight simula-
tors [11] [12].
Sky illumination on virtual objects is the most significant factor
in outdoor rendering not only in virtual environments but also in
augmented reality systems [8] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18][19]
[20]. Generating sky colours as a background for each outdoor
scene is an essential aspect to make it more realistic. Illustrations of
the sky has become very crucial, as many buildings are designed,
so that the sky or other surrounding scenes are emblazoned
through the building windows [21].
Shadows are one of the prominent factors taken into
consideration when it comes to enhancement of realistic outdoor
environments; by realising the depth of the scene, using the
distance between the objects present. Without shadows and
shadow casters, it is strenuous to assimilate, as well as appreciate
the real size of objects when compared to others, which are placed
further away.
Semi-soft shadows are meant to be used in outdoor environ-
ments, considering their distance from the light source-sun is
cosmic. Wider areas in outdoor environments require an altered
and somewhat particular shadow generating technique to reveal:
the difference between shadows of the objects that are located
closer to the camera’s point of view and of those, that are located
further ahead.
Casting virtual shadows on other virtual objects and real
environments should be supported in realistic outdoor environ-
ments, hence an advanced technique is introduced to achieve this.
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The presented shadow generating technique is easily implemented
not only in any virtual environments but also in all AR systems.
In outdoor AR games, the designer must choose the colour of
virtual objects, to create quality photo that reflects sky colour
variations. The choice of the colour suitable for outdoor AR
games, requires extensive investigation, even though accurate
results have not been attained yet [22] [23] especially in the case of
real-time [24] [7] [17] [8] [9]. Revealing the effects of sky colour
on the virtual objects is the final objective taken into account to
enhance the realism of the outdoor AR system.
An appropriate technique is in order to integrate all mentioned
factors in augmented reality. The technique removes the problems
associated with colour selection. Furthermore, it has the additional
advantage of observing the interaction between sky colours and
virtual objects like what can be seen on real objects during a day
[25] [26] [27] [28].
This article includes two new ideas to generate a realistic real-
time outdoor environment. A semi-soft shadow generating
technique with high quality and lower cost of rendering is
presented; as it is required for wide scale outdoor environments.
Implementing the proposed shadows technique in AR systems is
further contribution of this study to have virtual shadows on other
virtual and real objects. The integration technique in an AR
system can be expressed as additional achievements towards the
main goal of this piece.
Previous Works
Blinn [29] were the first researcher who used the indirect
illumination to demonstrate the actual distance between objects
which is known as: reflection mapping. The method is improved
by [30] then [31]. They used diffuse and specular reflection to
corresponding components of reflection. Nishita [32] and Ward
[33] illuminated real-time environments in computer graphics. A
model specifically designed for realistic rendering of large-scale
scenes is proposed by [34]. Stumpfel [35] is another researcher
who worked on illumination of sun and sky to produce realistic
environments.
Daylight is a combination of all direct and indirect lights
originated from the sun and the diffuse of other objects. In other
words, daylight includes direct sunlight, diffuse sky radiation and
both of them reflected from the earth and terrestrial objects.
Intensity of skylight or sky luminance is not uniform, awry and
depends on the clarity of the sky [32].
Figure 1. Research focus area.
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The sun and sky are the main sources of natural illumination.
The sun is a luminary that simulates the effect of sunlight and can
be used to show how the shadows cast by a structure affect the
surrounding area. The angle of the light from the sun is controlled
by ones location, date and time. Sky light is most important
outdoor illumination to make the scene realistic [2].
Hosek et al. [36] did a critical job on sky colour generation,
based on Perez model which suffers from turbidity. Realistic sky
colour is still based on [37] and [34] technique that we use as well.
To achieve a realistic mixed reality, shadows play an important
role and are indispensable factors for 3D impressions of the scene
[38] [39] [40]. AR simulation of shadows for a virtual object in
real environments is difficult because of deeds reconstruction of
the real-world scene, especially when details of approximation of
the real scene geometry and the light source are known [41].
Jacobs et al. [42] prepared a classification of the illumination
methods into two different groups, common illumination [41] [43]
[44] [45] [15] [46] and relighting [47] [48] in mixed reality. The
credibility of shadow construction with the correct estimation of
light source position can be found in [48] [6] [49] [50].
Casting virtual shadows on other virtual and real objects is one
of the existing issues in augmented reality. Haller et al. [45]
modified shadow volumes to generate shadows in AR. In this
algorithm a virtual object such as the real one but not more
accurate is simulated which is called phantoms. The silhouette of
both the virtual and the phantom objects are detected. Phantom
shadows could be cast on virtual objects and virtual shadows could
be cast on phantom objects. This method requires many phantoms
to cover the real scene. Silhouette detection, the expensive part of
shadow volumes is the main disadvantage of this technique
especially when it comes complicated scenes. To recognize a real
object as well as generation of the phantoms, is another problem
with this algorithm.
Jacobs et al. [41] introduced a technique to create the virtual
shadow of real objects with respect to a virtual light source where
the real objects and the virtual light source are equipped with 3D
sensors. Projection shadows are used for simpler objects while
Shadow Maps (SMs) [51] are applied for more complicated ones.
They proposed a real-time rendering method to simulate colour-
consistent shadows of virtual objects in mixed reality.
Yeoh et al [18] proposed a technique for realistic shadows in
mixed reality using a shadow segmentation approach which
recovers geometrical information on multiple faded shadows. The
paper focused on dynamic shadow detection in a dynamic scene
for future requirements in mixed reality environments. The
technique is similar to Shadow Catcher in [52] but in dynamic
scenes.
Aittala [19] applied Convolution Shadow Maps [53] to produce
soft shadows in AR which employed both mip-map filtering and
fast summed area tables [54] to enhance blurring with variable
radius. The method is applicable to both scenes external and the
internal scenes.
Castro et al. [23] advised a method to produce soft shadows
with less aliasing which uses a fixed distance relative to the marker,
but with only one camera. The method also performs one sphere
mapping such as [49], but selects a source or sources light most
representative of the scene. This is important because of hardware
limitations of mobile devices. The method supports self-shadowing
as well as soft shadowing. They used filtering method such as
Percentage Closer Filtering (PCF) [55] and Variance Shadow
Maps (VSMs) [56] to generate soft shadows.
For the consideration of sunlight and skylight, [24] proposed an
outdoor image by taking into account the sun and sky light with a
linear combination as a basis image. The intensity of both sunlight
and skylight are achieved by solving the system equation. This
research could obtain the effect of environments on virtual objects
in a fixed viewpoint. The main issue dealing with existing intrinsic
image decomposition approaches is unreliability of natural
captured image with a little control. Manually picking up some
regions of the image to find a desirable sun and sky light, to make
the algorithm reliable is another problem.
Knecht et al. [57] applied a technique in radiosity for blending
the virtual objects into the real environments. Some shortcomings
such as bleeding the light and double shadowing resulted in
combining the instant radiosity and differential rendering [57].
The final work avoids inconsistent colour bleeding artifacts.
Ka´n et al. [58] used ray tracing method and applied photon
mapping to enhance the realism of virtual objects as well as visual
coherence between real and virtual objects in a composited image.
Madsen [9] estimated the outdoor illumination conditions in
AR systems based on detecting the dynamic shadows. They used
shadow volumes for generating virtual shadows. The direct sun
and sky radiances from pixel values of dynamic shadows in live
video are taken into account.
None real-time rendering is caused due to gathering many
samples of the background image at different times which is the
main difference with our approach in this study [59,60]. Liu et al.
[7] and Xing et al. [8] presented a static approach which could
consider the outdoor illumination by taking advantage of essential
association of the illumination factors and statistic attributes of
each video frame. Such as previous work of this author, this
research is viewpoint dependent. A desired future work of these
researches was to obtain this results, but for real-time rendering
which is our approach.
The biggest issue with augmented reality is the exact
illumination with respect to the environments to make the system
maximally realistic [16] [18] [19] [61] [62] [20] [63] [8] [9]. In the
case of indoor rendering light colour and effect of other objects on
virtual objects and vice versa is important which can be taken into
Figure 2. The zenithal and azimuthal angles on the hemi-
sphere.
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account to make objects more realistic. In the case of outdoor
rendering and involving sun and sky light the effect of skylight or
sky colour plays a more significant role [64].
Kolivand et al. [65] proposed a technique to apply the effect of
the sky colour on virtual objects in augmented reality in any
specific location date and time. The main issue with the method is
casting shadows on flat surfaces only due to the use of projection
shadows for shadow generation. In this study we have tried to
overcome the previous issue regarding to casting virtual shadows
on other virtual and real objects with respect to the interaction
between sky colour and augmented objects like what can be seen
on real objects during daytime.
Methods and Materials
Sky Modelling
Before determining position of the sun, the sky must be
modelled [66]. For creating the sky, virtual dome is a convenient
tool. There are two ways to model the dome; using 3D modelling
software such as 3D Max Studio, Rhino or Maya and using a
mathematical function. Mathematical modelling is adopted for this
real-time environment since it is easy to handle in the case of real-
time. The dome is like a hemisphere in which the view point is
located. Suppose that earth is a sphere. Julian date is a precise
technique to calculate suns position [67]. The position could be
calculated for a specific longitude, latitude, date and time using
Julian date. The time of day is calculated using the Equation 1.
t~tsz0:17 sin ( 4p(J{180)
373 ){0:129 sin ( 2p(J{8)
355 )z
12 SM{L
p
ð1Þ
where,
t: Solar time
ts: Standard time
J: Julian date
SM: Standard meridian
L: Longitude
The solar declination is calculated as Equation 2. The time is
calculated in decimal hours and degrees in radians. Finally, zenith
and azimuth can be calculated as follows: ( Equation 3 and 4):
d~0:4093sin(2p(J{8)
368 )ð2Þ
hs~p
2{sin{1(sinlsind{coslcosdcos pt
12 )ð3Þ
Qs~tan{1(
{cosdsin pt
12
coslsind{sinlcosdcos pt
12
)ð4Þ
where hsis solar zenith, Qsis solar azimuth and lis latitude. With
calculation of zenith and azimuth (Figure 2)suns position will
become obvious.
Perez Sky Model
The model is convenient to illuminate arbitrary point (hp,cp)of
the sky dome with respect to the position of the sun. It uses CIE
[68] standard and could be used for a wide range of atmospheric
conditions. Luminance of point (hp,cp)is calculated using the
Equations 5 and 6:
L(hp,cp)~(1zAe
B
cos hp)(1zCeDcpzEcos2cp)ð5Þ
cp~cos{1(sinhssinhpcos(Qp{Qs)zcoshscoshp)ð6Þ
Where:
A: Darkening or brightening of the horizon
Figure 3. Left: theory of Z-GaF Shadow Maps when light and view direction are perpendicular, Right: Z-partitioning with 3 partitions in 1024*1024
resolution.
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B: Luminance gradient near the horizon
C: Relative intensity of circumsolar region
D: Width of the circumsolar region
E: Relative backscattered light received at the earth surface
Essentially, to use Yxy space, the following three components
are needed. In each point of view, the Y luminance is calculated
by:
Y~Yz
L(hp,cp)
L(0,hs)ð7Þ
The chromaticity of x and y is calculated by:
x~xz
L(hp,cp)
L(0,hs)ð8Þ
y~yz
L(hp,cp)
L(0,hs)ð9Þ
To colour each sky pixel, all of the pixels in the introduced
formulae must be calculated iteratively. Involving date and time in
specific locations enables the exact colour reproduction of each
pixel.
Z-Partitioning, Gaussian and Fogs Shadow Maps (Z-GaF
Shadow Maps)
Shadow maps are convenient for casting shadows on other
objects but suffer from aliasing. Applying Z-partitioning on
conventional shadow maps and setting the resolution of the
partitions could solve the aliasing out as many other works
mentioned in the literature have. Semi-soft shadows are the most
suited types of shadows which could be considered for outdoor
rendering. To generate semi-soft shadows Gaussian approach is
employed on the improved shadow maps using Z-partitioning.
Although shadows demonstrate the actual distance between
objects in virtual reality, AR systems still seem to lack the distance
between real and virtual objects. Virtual objects usually appear
nearer to the camera resulting augmented objects. In outdoor AR
systems, this issue is met more than indoor rendering due to long
distances and wide areas in outdoor environments. Applying a
specific parameter of Fog [69] in the spacial partition of the view
frustum which is split in advance, makes the virtual objects appear
far from camera and consequently suitable for far distances in
outdoor environments. The algorithm is summarised as shown in
Algorithm S1.
Applying Z-partitioning and Gaussian approximation on
shadow maps reduces aliasing through increasing high resolution
for areas in the scene that are closer to the point of view and
decreasing the resolution for areas of the scene that are far away
(Figure 3(Left)). Z-partitioning was done by splitting the camera
view frustum into segments and filling the z-buffer for each
segment separately(Figure 3(Right)). Assigning convenient resolu-
tion to each fragment depends on the fragment’s z-value. This idea
is used for wide scenes such as large terrain.
View frustum splitting is based on the earliest technique [70]
and starts from the first object in the scene. This allows the GPU to
be independent of the parts of the scene which are out of any
rendering contribution. This, in addition to making the algorithm
much faster, reduces the number of layers considerably.
View frustum splitting allows a shadow map to be generated
and to change the resolution of each split part. The different types
of splitting have an effect on the final quality and rendering speed.
Uniform splitting, logarithmic and practical splitting schemes are
the common types of splitting as can be seen in Figure 4.
Although parallel split schemes are proposed for reducing the
aliasing, a uniform split scheme does not rectify the aliasing
problem. The uniform distribution of perspective aliasing behaves
no differently from standard shadow mapping. In this case, the
perspective aliasing increases hyperbolically when the objects
moves towards the camera. The logarithmic scheme is convenient
for near objects but as objects are not located in front of the
camera, it is not suitable in general cases.
As logarithmic and uniform schemes could not cover the anti-
aliasing for both near and far objects, taking their average could be
Figure 4. Split schemes, Left: Uniform splitting, Center: Logarithmic splitting, Right: Practical splitting.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.g004
Figure 5. View frustum and light frustum mix to create Parallel
Split Shadow Maps.
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beneficial (Figure 5). Simply put, if Ciis a ith split of practical
splitting, then
Cpractical
i~(Clogarothmic
izCuniform
i)=2ð10Þ
The presented technique for splitting is applicable for near and
far objects. This technique requires non-negative bias to adjust the
clip situation. There are some simple ways to reduce the bias.
Increasing the precise depth is a method better suited to the near
and far plane of the camera frustum.
Splitting whole scenes into multiple partitions helps control the
resolution in different parts of a scene. A major difference between
cascade shadow maps and the new approach is the non-uniform
partitions.
In the proposed technique, there is no extra bias and it can be
applied to bias concerns in most cases. A drawback of the
proposed technique was evident when the light frustum was
parallel to the view frustum.
Approximating the depth distribution using Gaussian approach,
not only generates smoother shadow boundaries but also reduces
the computational and storage cost.
Figure 6. (A): The first two steps of Z-GaF which is conventional Shadow Maps, (B): Applying the presented Z-partitioning, (C):
Applying Gaussian approximation on shadow maps, (D): Soft Shadows.
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Figure 7. (A): Logarithm splitting, (B): Practical splitting.
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The best way to create the illusion of depth is to take the colour
value into account with respect to the distance from the viewpoint,
which is fog employment. Fog is one of the widely used effects in
most outdoor games whereby the size and the reality of the
environments are realised. By enabling the depth testing and the
fog, choosing the fog mode, fog colour, and fog density for the
closest partition which is set by high resolution, realistic fog effect is
constructed. The fog reduces the sharpness of the virtual objects.
Therefore, far away virtual objects appear to fade into background
similar to what can be seen in real environments. By setting the
starting and ending distances for the fog not only in the first
partition but also for any other partitions, fog can be applied on
any specific virtual object.
In situations where the light direction is not perpendicular to the
view direction (Figure 4(Left)), splitting the depth map into non-
intersection layers and creating one shadow map for each layer in
the light space could cover the redundancy. Each shadow map is
generated through irregular frustum clipping and scene organisa-
tion. This makes it possible to have different shadow maps without
any intersection sample points.
Ci~lClog
iz(1{l)Cuni
ið11Þ
C{ilog~n(f
n)i
m,0ƒlƒ1,0ƒmƒ1ð12Þ
Cuni
i~nz(f{n)i
mð13Þ
Where
mis the number of splits, nand fare near and far plane
clippings, respectively. Clog
iand Cuni
iare two classic splitting
schemes that increase details by referring to [71]. ais the split
Table 1. Speed of rendering measured by FPS in different resolutions.
Method 1024*1024 2048*2048
SMs 122 116
PCF 75 63
CSMs 84 79
Z-GaF 96 90
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.t001
Figure 8. (A): Shadow Maps, (B): PCF, (C): CSMs with Gaussian blurring, (D): Z-GaF Shadow Maps.
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position weight which depends on the practical requirements of
the application.
Li~Wi{(Wi\Wi{1), ð14Þ
Where Wiis light frustum splitting with respect to view frustum
splitting (Vi) and W0~.
Implementation and Results
Z-GaF Shadow Maps
Implementing the two first steps of Z-GaF algorithm are the
conventional shadow maps whose results are illustrated in Figure 6
(A). All pictures are captured in 1024*1024 resolution. The
shadows of the tree are cast on the elephant. Self-shadowing can
be observed on some parts of the elephant’s body especially
shadows of the ears and ivories. In Figure 6 A aliasing is the main
issue which made the shadows less realistic.
Splitting the Z-depth to 2 to 4 partitions depends on the
distance of the objects from the cameras viewpoint allows to
change the resolution of each partition (Figure 6 B). High
resolution generates high quality while producing low FPS. The
close partitions are set with high enough resolution to enhance the
realism of objects. Low resolution reduces the time of rendering,
consequently increasing the speed of rendering (Figure 6C and
(D)). Obviously, when a wide scene like an outdoor environment is
rendered with the same resolution, some parts of it which are
located far away from the camera, may not be seen very well,
wasting the GPU’s and CPU’s time. Therefore, they are
performed in low resolution. Practical splitting is tested to generate
appropriate distribution of the partitions which can be seen in
Figure 7.
Figure 9. Integration of Z-GaF Shadow Maps and sky colour, January 1st at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia at different times of day.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.g009
Figure 10. Left: Eiffel Tower, captured on 6 October at 16:03 (Source: http://www.earthcam.com/, email: ), Right: The Software generated result for
Eiffel Tower position on 6 October at 16:03 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/118766222@N04/12784543685/).
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.g010
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Higher resolution results in a higher shadow quality, but suffers
from an increase in rendering time. To overcome this problem
and keep the trade-off balance between quality and rendering
speed, the view frustum is split into different partitions. The
number of partitions can be set manually. Figure 7 shows the
difference between our proposed technique and previous ones for
determining the best suited splitting. To enhance the quality of
shadows the close partitions are set with a higher resolution, while
in case of reducing the time of rendering, far partitions are set with
a lower resolution. Results of assigning low resolution on some of
the partitions can be observed in Table 1 in case of high enough
FPS.
In Figure 7 (A) the partition distribution is based on logarithm
function. The partition’s location is not appropriately selected. In
Figure 7 (B) partitioning is constructed based on Practical splitting.
The beginning of each partition is marked by a red arrow.
Integration of the presented approach for Z-partitioning and
Gaussian approximation not only generates a convenient semi-soft
shadow compared to PCF and Cascade Shadow Maps (CSMs)
[72] but also, there is no light leaking as compared with VSMs
[56] and Layer Variance Shadow Maps (LVSMs) [73]. The main
concern of VSMs and Convolution Shadow Maps (CoSMs) [71] is
light bleeding due to Chebyshev Inequality for the upper bound of
light visibility test and exponential approximation, respectively.
Our upper bound approximation, which is based on Gaussian
distribution for all layers generates a semi-soft shadow or somehow
soft shadows as can be seen in Figure 8 (D).
Figure 11. Left: Eiffel Tower, captured on 24 October at 16:23 (Source: http://www.earthcam.com/, email: ), Right: The Software generated result for
Eiffel Tower position on 24 October at 16:23 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/118766222@N04/12784631475/).
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.g011
Figure 12. Left: Eiffel Tower, captured on 5 September at 17:19 (Source: http://www.earthcam.com/, email: ), Right: The Software generated result for
Eiffel Tower position on 6 September at 17:19 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/118766222@N04/12785060384/).
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.g012
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Figure 8 draws a comparison between previous algorithms and
Z-GaF Shadow Maps in 1024*1024 resolutions. Figure 8 (A) is the
result of conventional Shadow Maps while (B) is the result of PCF.
Figure 8 (C) illustrates CSMs using Gaussian blurring. Figure 8
(D) is the result of Z-GaF Shadow Maps which is an accurate
shadow with semi-soft shadows for outdoor environments.
Integration of Sky colour and Z-GaF Shadow Maps
Integration of sky colours and Z-GaF shadow Maps in real-time
environments is performed successfully. Z-GaF Shadow Maps
could produce high quality semi-soft shadows compared to
previous algorithms. By combination of Z-GaF Shadow Maps
and sky colour using a friendly GUI to set-up the specific location,
date and time, an outdoor rendering application is provided. In
the next section an evaluation on proposed integration is presented
in details.
Figure 9 illustrates the implementation of Z-GaF Shadow Maps
and sky colour. The effect of sky colour can be observed from the
pictures.
There is a majority of web camera service providers on the
World Wide Web, however, most of the web cameras do not grant
a view of the sky. Many of them show traffic or crowds. Only a few
web cameras capture the sky panorama. Figures 10, 11 and 12
shows some images of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, captured from
France-Telecom (2012) at different points in time, in different
days.
Discussion
Extra stages are not needed to generate virtual shadows on
virtual objects through implementing Z-GaF Shadow Maps. Since
they are based on shadow maps, casting the virtual shadows on
other objects is the main ability of this category of shadow
generating techniques.
Figure 13(A) illustrates a scene including two virtual objects, a
tree and an elephant. The virtual shadows of the tree are cast on
the virtual elephant and the real wall simultaneously. The shadow
technique used in the left picture is that of simple shadow maps
with 512*512 resolution which does not produce any adequate
results. Applying PCF with 1024*1024 resolution in the right side
picture yields better results ( Figure 13(B)).
Figure 14 is the exact scene which was presented in Figure 13.
In these pictures Z-GaF Shadow Maps are applied instead. In
picture (A), Z-GaF Shadow Maps without blurring cast virtual
shadows on real and virtual objects, while in the picture (B), Z-GaF
Shadow Maps and Gaussian approximation is employed to
generate soft shadows.
Figure 13. (A) Conventional Shadow Maps on virtual and real objects, (B) PCF shadows on virtual and real objects.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.g013
Figure 14. Casting Z-GaF Shadow Maps on virtual and real environments simultaneously, (A) Z-GaF Shadow Maps, (B) Soft shadows
using Z-GaF Shadow Maps.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.g014
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PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 10 September 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 9 | e108334
Castro et al. [23] proposed a method to produce semi-soft
shadows with less aliasing using a fixed distance relative to the
marker, but with only one camera (Figure 15 (A)). The method
also performs one sphere mapping such as [49], but selects a
source or sources of light, most protruding at the scene. This is
important because of hardware limitations of mobile devices. The
method does not support self-shadowing and soft shadowing. They
used filtering methods such as PCF ([55] and VSMs ([56] to
generate soft shadows. To compare our research with [23], Z-GaF
Shadow Maps is implemented to cast soft shadows on other virtual
and real objects includes 10 million triangles which can be seen in
Figure 15 (B).
Collectively, Z-GaF Shadow Maps could be performed in
augmented reality environments to generate shadows on other
objects without any aliasing and light bleeding. They are also
suitable to be applied for soft shadow generation not only in virtual
environments but also in augmented reality systems.
Interaction Between Sky colour and Object in Outdoor
AR Environments
The technique integrates position of the sun, sky colours,
shadows and interaction between sky colours and augmented
objects. Position of the sun is managed, using Julian date and a
GUI for setting the location, date and time. The sky colours are
generated based on Perez model [37] but are not visible for the
camera as the dome is beyond the view of frustum. Augmented
objects are uploaded as OBJ models. Both marker and markerless
techniques are applied to control the location, direction and
orientation of the augmented objects. Shadows are appeared using
Z-GaF Shadow Maps. The generated sky colour exerts the energy
of each patch to the all visible patches of augmented objects using
RCC [65]. Convergence rates could be set through the GUI to
find out the best interaction compared to the real objects. The
desired interaction is achieved by comparing to the real objects
which are the best benchmark for the current work as the manner
advocated by most researchers [74] [75] [24] [7] [17] [8].
The implementation during its first stage starts from ARToolkit
with multiple markers loop function as the starting point and then
calls a function to render an OpenGL GLUT scene, passing the
geometry of the scene as function parameters. The GLUT scene
function calls another GLUT display method in the OpenGL
GLUT. The method calls the initializations of the scene, calls the
display loop, and determines the geometry of the virtual scene.
Knowing that the shadows, depending on Z-GaF Shadow Maps,
of each object are rendered within the scene itself, it would be
much easier for a programmer to render the shadows in AR
environments. Moreover, to show more realistic interaction
between augmented and real objects a similar looking-like
primitive alpha objects for the background of the virtual
Figure 15. (A) Castro results [23], (B) Our results.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.g015
Figure 16. A scene with and without augmented objects, at 9:55 on January 11th 2013 at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.g016
Realistic Real-Time Outdoor Rendering in Augmented Reality
PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 11 September 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 9 | e108334
environments is taken into consideration to cast the shadows on
real environments.
For the AR environment Z-GaF Shadow Maps are employed.
The sky colour is constructed but remains invisible. The 3D
objects are loaded using a simple markerless technique in a wide
scene. Position of the sun is traced by setting the location, date and
time. The effects of generated sky colours are applied on the
virtual objects during the day using Algorithm S2. The position of
the viewer is set by changing the position of the system or set
according to the real suns’ current position. By employing these
techniques following results are obtained:
Where, Ri,Pi,Aiare radiosity, reflection, and area of patch ith
respectively. Ajis the area of patch jth, and Eij is the amount of
energy from ith patch to jth patch. Fij is form factor from ith patch
to jth patch [76]. Implementation of RCC is employed successfully
and a video of the results is posted in youtube
(http :==www:youtube:com=watch?v~RHbb0fgpw8Y).
Regarding the revelation of the interactions between sky colours
and virtual objects in AR, wide surfaces for virtual objects are
convenient compared to thinner ones. Trees have been selected to
make the scene more complex and elephants because of their wide
enough skin to show the amount of sky colour energy absorption
on the virtual objects.
In a wide outdoor AR scene, markerless technique is performed
to make the environments more realistic and indistinguishable
than the real objects. Figure 16 (left) is a real scene, while (right) is
the scene with three virtual objects and their shadows. Casting
shadows on virtual objects(Big elephant) is one of the advantages of
Z-GaF Shadow Maps which makes the system more realistic.
Figure 17 (left) is an augmented scene with three virtual objects
(two elephants and a tree) which is captured at 9:55 in January
11th 2013 at Teknologi University, Malaysia, where (right) is the
scene with the three virtual objects which is captured at 15:28,
same day. The interaction between sky colours and objects is
dstinct in these two pictures. The real interaction can be seen in
the areas of Aand Cwhich are marked on the pictures. Area B
shows the virtual interaction. As compared with the Aand Cthe
results are accepted. The area Dshows the shadows on other
objects. In Figure 17 (left) when the real objects are darker due to
the real sky colour, virtual objects also follow the effect of real sky
colours using the proposed technique. In Figure 17 (right) when
Figure 17. Interaction between sky colour and objects in augmented environment at different times of January 11th 2013 at
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.g017
Figure 18. Rotating the virtual objects using mouse and keyboard in augmented environment at 15:28 on January 11th 2013 at
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108334.g018
Realistic Real-Time Outdoor Rendering in Augmented Reality
PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 12 September 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 9 | e108334
the real objects are lighter due to the real sky colour, virtual objects
are also lighter.
Figure 18 (left) is an augmented scene with the three virtual
objects which was captured at 15:28 in January 11th while (right) is
the same scene in different orientation. When the location or
orientation of augmented objects changes, the shadows remain in
the same direction as the real ones.
The results posted in this section show the processes by which
the objectives and consequently the aim of the research are
achieved. The sky colours, shadows and the effects of the sky on
virtual objects in the AR system are applied progressively.
Conclusion and Future Works
This study provides a technique to demonstrate the interaction
between sky colours and virtual objects in an augmented reality
taking shadows into account. The main research contribution, in
addition to shadow improvement, is the appearance of realistic
virtual objects in outdoor rendering augmented reality environ-
ments. It involves 3D objects, sky colour effects and shadows
which enhance the realism of the AR systems.
In the first part, the sky colours with respect to position of the
sun in any specific location, date and time is successfully
constructed. Specific longitude, latitude, date and time are the
required parameters to calculate the exact position of the sun. The
position is calculated based on Julian date and the sky colour is
created based on Perez model. The sky colour is implemented
based on Preetham’s method [34] that is analytic model like actual
atmosphere used in outdoor rendering.
Another contribution of this research is a new algorithm to
create shadows with higher quality and higher frames per second,
when compared to other algorithms such as Layer Variance
Shadow Maps and Cascade Shadow Maps. Z-GaF Shadow Maps
have been tested to vindicate an increase in the quality in a typical
application.
The integrated prototype has been tested for performance. It
carries out what the users expect. The strategy of testing the results
of the technique have carried out. These include precise choice of
the test data. The software has been produced for testing purposes
during the research. It has helped to show that the calculations and
software results are free from error. The results have been
compared with the real world environment as well.
Interaction between virtual and real objects, beyond the
interaction between sky colours and objects can largely enhance
the realism. Much work needs to be done to induce the influences
of real objects on virtual ones and vice versa. Radiosity and Ray-
tracing are the suggested techniques when tasks such as this are
performed. The radiosity technique is a more complicated process,
requiring improvements to become fast enough to be applied in
augmented reality environments as well as virtual environments.
This software, in addition to helping game makers generate
outdoor games without worrying about shadows position and sky
colours at different times of day and different day of year, also
makes it possible for teachers of physics to teach about Earth orbits
and the effect sun has on shadows.
Supporting Information
Algorithm S1 Z-GaF Shadow Maps.
(PDF)
Algorithm S2 Radiosity Caster Culling (RCC).
(PDF)
Acknowledgments
The research paper supported by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM).
Special thanks to Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) and Research
Management Centre (RMC) providing financial support of this research.
Author Contributions
Conceived and designed the experiments: HK. Performed the experiments:
HK MSS. Analyzed the data: HK. Contributed reagents/materials/
analysis tools: HK MSS. Wrote the paper: HK. Revised the manuscript:
MSS.
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