Video architecture and real-time lighting technology for tangible teleconference

This paper proposes a video architecture and real-time lighting technology for tangible teleconference. The tangible teleconference is to homogenize virtually the lighting environments of remote users in the video conference. To realize the tangible teleconference, the paper proposes a video architecture which consists of color texture, specular reflection component, and lighting environment map of each user. The environment map is obtained by sampling the lighting sources on mirror ball image. And the proposed video architecture is implemented by GPU-based programming, and is optimized at GPU hardware for realtime operation. According to the simulations, the proposed video architecture and GPU-based rendering relight objects in real-time. The objects are rendered by the specular reflections and homogeneous environments of users. The proposed system enables the users to immerse video conference just as they are in the same environment.