Stereo-consistent screen-space ambient occlusion

Screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) shows high efficiency and is widely used in real-time 3D applications. However, using SSAO algorithms in stereo rendering can lead to inconsistencies due to the differences in the screen-space information captured by the left and right eye. This will affect the perception of the scene and may be a source of viewer discomfort. In this paper, we show that the raw obscurance estimation part and subsequent filtering are both sources of inconsistencies. We developed a screen-space method involving both views in conjunction, leading to a stereo-aware raw obscurance estimation method and a stereo-aware bilateral filter. The results show that our method reduces stereo inconsistencies to a level comparable to geometry-based AO solutions, while maintaining the performance benefits of a screen-space approach.


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@InProceedings { SBE22,
  author       = "Shi, Peiteng and Billeter, Markus and Eisemann, Elmar",
  title        = "Stereo-consistent screen-space ambient occlusion",
  booktitle    = "I3D 2022: ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games",
  year         = "2022",
  keywords     = "Screen-space ambient occlusion, Stereo consistency, VR",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2022/SBE22"
}