Lytro Announces VR Light Field Rendering Software ‘Volume Tracer’
Lytro, the once consumer-facing light field camera company which has recently pivoted to create high-end production tools, has announced a light field rendering software for VR that essentially aims to free developers from the current limitations of real-time rendering. The company calls it ‘Volume Tracer’.
The company’s newest software-only solution, Volume Tracer, places multiple virtual cameras within a view volume of an existing 3D scene that might otherwise be expected to be rendered in real-time. Because developers who create real-time rendered VR experiences constantly fight to hit the necessary 90 fps required for comfortable play, and have to do so in a pretty tight envelope—both Oculus and HTC agree on a recommended GPU spec of NVIDIA GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 480—the appeal of graphics power-saving light fields is pretty apparent.
Lytro breaks it down on their website, saying “each individual pixel in these 2D renders provide sample information for tracing the light rays in the scene, enabling a complete Light Field volume for high fidelity, immersive playback.”
According to Lytro, content created with Volume Tracer provides view-dependent illumination including specular highlights, reflections, refractions, etc; and is scalable to any volume of space, from seated to room-scale sizes. It also presents a compelling case for developers looking to eke out as much visual detail as possible by hooking into industry standard 3D modeling and rendering tools like Maya, 3DS Max, Nuke, Houdini, V-Ray, Arnold, Maxwell, and Renderman.
Real-time playback with positional tracking is also possible on Oculus rift and HTC Vive at up to 90 fps refresh rate.
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