In this thesis the possibilities for real-time visualization of OpenVDB files are investigated. The basics of OpenVDB, its possibilities, as well as NanoVDB and its GPU port, were studied. A system was developed using PNanoVDB, the graphics API port of OpenVDB. Techniques were explored to improve and accelerate a single ray approach of ray tracing. To prove real-time capability, two single scattering approaches were also implemented. One of these was selected, further investigated and optimized to achieve interactive real-time rendering. It is important to give artists immediate feedback on their adjustments, as well as the possibility to change all parameters to ensure a user friendly creation process. In addition to the optical rendering, corresponding benchmarks were collected to compare different improvement approaches and to prove their relevance. Attention was paid to the rendering times and memory consumption on the GPU to ensure optimal use. A special focus, when rendering OpenVDB files, was put on the integrability and extensibility of the program to allow easy integration into an existing real-time renderer like U-Render.

Ray tracing acceleration through dedicated data structures has long been an important topic in computer graphics. In general, two different approaches are proposed: spatial and directional acceleration structures. The thesis at hand presents an innovative combined approach of these two areas, which enables a further acceleration of the tracing process of rays. State-of-the-art spatial data structures are used as base structures and enhanced by precomputed directional visibility information based on a sophisticated abstraction concept of shafts within an original structure, the Line Space. In the course of the work, novel approaches for the precomputed visibility information are proposed: a binary value that indicates whether a shaft is empty or non-empty as well as a single candidate approximating the actual surface as a representative candidate. It is shown how the binary value is used in a simple but effective empty space skipping technique, which allows a performance gain in ray tracing of up to 40% compared to the pure base data structure, regardless of the spatial structure that is actually used. In addition, it is shown that this binary visibility information provides a fast technique for calculating soft shadows and ambient occlusion based on blocker approximations. Although the results contain a certain inaccuracy error, which is also presented and discussed, it is shown that a further tracing acceleration of up to 300% compared to the base structure is achieved. As an extension of this approach, the representative candidate precomputation is demonstrated, which is used to accelerate the indirect lighting computation, resulting in a significant performance gain at the expense of image errors. Finally, techniques based on two-stage structures and a usage heuristic are proposed and evaluated. These reduce memory consumption and approximation errors while maintaining the performance gain and also enabling further possibilities with object instancing and rigid transformations. All performance and memory values as well as the approximation errors are measured, presented and discussed. Overall, the Line Space is shown to result in a considerate improvement in ray tracing performance at the cost of higher memory consumption and possible approximation errors. The presented findings thus demonstrate the capability of the combined approach and enable further possibilities for future work.

In the context of augmented reality we define tracking as a collection of methods to obtain the position and orientation (pose) of a user. By means of various displaying techniques, this ensures a correct visual overlay of graphical information onto the reality perceived. Precise results for calculation of the camera pose are gained by methods of image processing, usually analyzing the pixels of an image and extracing features, which can be recognized over the image sequence. However, these methods do not regard the process of image synthesis or at least in a very simplyfied way. In contrast, the class of model-based methods assumes a given 3D model of the observed scene. Based on the model data features can be identified to establish correspondences in the camera image. From these feature correspondences the camera pose is calculated. An interesting approach is the strategy of analysis-by-synthesis, regarding the computer graphics rendering process for extending the knowledge about the model by information from image synthesis and other environment variables. In this thesis the components of a tracking system are identified and further it is analyzed, to what extend information about the model, the rendering process and the environment can contribute to the components for improvement of the tracking process using analysis-by-synthesis. In particular, by using knowledge as topological information, lighting or perspective, the feature synthesis and correspondence finding should lead to visually unambiguous features that can be predicted and evaluated to be suitable for stable tracking of the camera pose.

This bachelor thesis investigates the utilization of the Wii Balance Board in virtual reality applications. For the investigation a snowboard game is implemented, in which the virtual avatar can be controlled with the pressure sensors of the Wii Balance Board. The user should be able to move playfully and intuitively through the virtual environment by balancing his body. The immersiveness and the influence on motion sickness and cybersickness will be investigated. In Addition, the Wii Balance Board will be compared with the Xbox Controller. The aim of the work is to evaluate whether the Wii Balance Board is able to allow free movement in virtual environments and whether it is more advantageous to use it rather than a conventional controller. The results of the survey indicate that the Wii Balance Board has a positive influence on the immersivness of the game, despite better game results by using a conventional controller. The survey also reveals that the use of the Wii Balance Board is responsible for more motion-sickness/cybersickness cases.

A gonioreflectometer is a device to measure the reflection properties of arbitrary materials. In this work, such an apparatus is being built from easily obtainable parts. Therefore three stepper-motors and 809 light-emitting diodes are controlled by an Arduino microcontroller. RGB-images are captured with an industrial camera which serve as refelction data. Furthermore, a control software with several capture programs and a renderer for displaying the measured materials are implemented. These allow capturing and rendering entire bidirectional reflection distribution functions (BRDFs) by which also complex anisotropic material properties can be represented. Although the quality of the results has some artifacts due to shadows of the camera, these artifacts can be largely removed by using special algorithms like inpainting. In addition, the goniorefelctometer is applied to other use cases. One can perform 3D scans, light field capturing and light staging without altering the construction. The quality of these processes also meet the expectations in a positive way. Thus, the gonioreflectometer built in this work can be seen as a widely applicable and economical alternative to other publications.