Tone Mapping in VR Environments

Abstract

Tone mapping is the process of mapping high dynamic range images to the low dynamic range of current displays. So far, tone mapping research was focused on static images, but with powerful graphics hardware available today, real time tone mapping becomes possible. In this paper we describe tone mapping within a VR environment. The tone mapping operator utilizes information about the user's line of sight obtained by a tracking system. Adaptation is optimized for the current view point and costly image operations are restricted to the central view field. Since all computations are completely performed by graphics hardware, we achieve interactive frame rates.