Virtual Reflections for Augmented Reality Environments

For a photorealistic appearance of virtual objects rendered in augmented reality environments global illumination must be simulated. In this paper we present a real-time technique for generating reflections on virtual objects which are rendered into images or image sequences of real scenes. The basic idea of virtual reflections is to estimate the environment of a virtual object by extracting information from the image to be augmented. Based on this estimated environment, cube map textures are generated and applied by using environment mapping during rendering to simulate reflections on the virtual object. Although some work has been done to simulate global lighting conditions in realtime augmented reality systems, current approaches do not consider reflections of real world objects onto virtual objects. Virtual reflections are an easy to implement approximation of such reflections and can be combined with existing illumination techniques, such as the creation of shadows for augmented reality environments.