Stylized augmented reality for improved immersion

The ultimate goal of augmented reality is to provide the user with a view of the surroundings enriched by virtual objects. Practically all augmented reality systems rely on standard real-time rendering methods for generating the images of virtual scene elements. Although such conventional computer graphics algorithms are fast, they often fail to produce sufficiently realistic renderings. The use of simple lighting and shading methods, as well as the lack of knowledge about actual lighting conditions in the real surroundings, cause virtual objects to appear artificial. In this paper, we propose an entirely novel approach for generating augmented reality images in video see-through systems. Our method is based on the idea of applying stylization techniques for reducing the visual realism of both the camera image and the virtual graphical objects. A special painterly image filter is applied to the camera video stream. The virtual scene elements are generated using a non-photorealistic rendering method. Since both the camera image and the virtual objects are stylized in a corresponding "cartoon-like" or "sketch-like" way, they appear very similar. As a result, the graphical objects seem to be an actual part of the real surroundings. We describe both the new painterly filter for the camera image and the non-photorealistic rendering method for virtual scene elements, which has been adapted for this purpose. Both are fast enough for generating augmented reality images in real-time and are highly customizable. The results obtained using our method, are very promising and show that it improves immersion in augmented reality.