Abstract: This sketch reports the development of an acquisition methodology to acquire high-resolution surface light fields of an office-size environment. 1

We present the WarpEngine, an architecture designed for real-time imaged-based rendering of natural scenes from arbitrary viewpoints. The modeling primitives are real-world images with per-pixel depth. Currently they are acquired and stored off-line; in the near future real-time depth-image acquisition will be possible, the WarpEngine is designed to render in immediate mode from such data sources.The depth-image resolution is locally adapted by interpolation to match the resolution of the output image. 3D warping can occur either before or after the interpolation; the resulting warped/interpolated samples are forward-mapped into a warp buffer, with the precise locations recorded using an offset. Warping processors are integrated on-chip with the warp buffer, allowing efficient, scalable implementation of very high performance systems. Each chip will be able to process 100 million samples per second and provide 4.8GigaBytes per second of bandwidth to the warp buffer.The WarpEngine is significantly less complex than our previous efforts, incorporating only a single ASIC design. Small configurations can be packaged as a PC add-in card, while larger deskside configurations will provide HDTV resolutions at 50 Hz, enabling radical new applications such as 3D television.WarpEngine will be highly programmable, facilitating use as a test-bed for experimental IBR algorithms.

In 1998 we introduced the idea for a project we call the Office of the Future. Our long-term vision is to provide a better every-day working environment, with high-fidelity scene reconstruction for life-sized 3D tele-collaboration. In particular, we want a true sense of presence with our remote collaborator and their real surroundings. The challenges related to this vision are enormous and involve many technical tradeoffs. This is true in particular for scene reconstruction. Researchers have been striving to achieve real-time approaches, and while they have made respectable progress, the limitations of conventional technologies relegate them to relatively low resolution in a restricted volume. We present a significant step toward our ultimate goal, via a slightly different path. In lieu of low-fidelity dynamic scene modeling we present an exceedingly high fidelity reconstruction of a real but static office. By assembling the best of available hardware and software technologies in static scene acquisition, modeling algorithms, rendering, tracking and stereo projective display, we are able to demonstrate a portal to a real office, occupied today by a mannequin, and in the future by a real remote collaborator. We now have both a compelling sense of just how good it could be, and a framework into which we will later incorporate dynamic scene modeling, as we continue to head toward our ultimate goal of 3D collaborative telepresence.

A methodology for the design and development of data-parallel applications and components is presented. Data-parallelism is a well understood form of parallel computation, yet developing simple applications can involve substantial efforts to express the problem in low level notations. We describe a process of software development for data-parallel applications starting from high level specifications, generating repeated refinements of designs to match different architectural models and performance constraints, enabling a development activity with cost benefit analysis. Primary issues are algorithm choice, correctness, and efficiency, followed by data decomposition, load balancing, and message passing coordination. Development of a data-parallel multitarget tracking application is used as a case study, showing the progression from high to low level refinements. We conclude by describing tool support for the process.

In the past, Virtual-Grid Compactors have not been well received because they generated sparse layouts. In analyzing this problem, we found three major areas where improvements could be made: breaking the virtual-grid lines into segments; decoupling the placement of non-interacting layers; and eliminating the centered nature of elements. The result is a compactor with substantially better mask generation.