Towards a Volumetric Virtual Environment (Extended Abstract)

Driven by fast development of both virtual reality and volume approach, including volume visualization and volume graphics, we propose in this paper to combine these two fields in order to take the advantages of both of them. We will focus on some critical issues towards building a volumetric VR system, specifically the modeling, rendering, and manipulations of a volumetric scene. Existing techniques such as voxel-based object simplification and accelerated volume rendering are applied, and new methods such as fast stero volume rendering and volumetric collision detection are introduced, with the idea of demonstrating the possibilities and potential benefits of incorporating the volumetric models into VR applications.