Viewing complex scenes with error-buffered light fields

This paper describes a new method for view synthesis from previously generated images. The method considers each image to be a slice of an overall light field which describes radiance as a function of position and direction. Each slice is then mapped onto the viewing parameters of a new slice as an orthogonally projected, texture-mapped, deformed surface whose z-values correspond to the disparity between rays passing through a given pixel. As a result, the slice can be sent to a traditional z-buffered texture-mapping graphics pipeline, wherein each pixel's depth corresponds to its error Therefore the z-buffer will implicitly select for each pixel the best match. We call this technique error-buffering (or /spl epsi/-buffering).