Abstract: This paper presents a new method for interactive viewing of dynamically sampled environments. We introduce a 3D mesh-based reconstruction called a tapestry that serves both as the display representation and as a cache that supports the re-use of samples across views. As the user navigates through the environment, the mesh continuously evolves to provide an appropriate image reconstruction for the current view. In addition, the reconstruction process provides feedback to the renderer to guide adaptive sampling.

We present our implementation of an interactive application utilizing the RADIANCE lighting and simulation system to generate the samples. Our approach offers several advantages. The 3D mesh supports an extended cache life for samples and generates a complete image, even with a sparse sampling density. Through efficient use of ubiquitous OpenGL hardware, we provide smooth progressive re-finement and resolution-independent viewing. With this framework, we achieve interactive performance on a two-processor machine running a single ray tracing process, even at a resolution of 3000 x 1000 pixels.