Accelerated Foveated Rendering based on Adaptive Tessellation

Abstract

We propose an optimization method for adaptive geometric tessellation, involving the saccadic motion of the human eye and foveated rendering. Increased demands on computational resources, especially in the field of head-mounted devices with gaze contingency make optimization schemes pertinent for a seamless user experience. For implementing foveated rendering, our algorithm tessellates a 3D model in real-time based on the location of the user's gaze, substituted with a mouse cursor in this project as a proof of concept. Saccades and fixations of the human eye are simulated by delaying the process of tessellation and rendering by the minimum time taken to complete a saccade. Calculations required for tessellation and rendering the changes on the screen are stalled as and when the eye fixates after a saccade. The paper walks through our contribution by describing the theory, the application method, and results from our user study evaluating our method.