Real-time stereoscopic rendering of realistic avatar for interactive 3D telepresence system

Digital communication technology has been developed for many years, but the communication forms are still limited to text, instant message, audio and video chat, etc. With the rapid development of new media technology, especially when the virtual reality technology comes to the public domain, it becomes possible to provide people from different locations with the face-to-face communication experience or even with the collaboration and interaction in the shared virtual environment. In this paper, we propose a solution of stereoscopic 3D rendering of the avatar in a telepresence system based on the latest virtual reality technologies. Two CAVE-like systems at different locations are connected through the network. The head position of the local user is tracked and sent to the remote server to reconstruct the 3D model of the remote user and render the stereo images, which are sent back to the local graphic workstations and rendered on a billboard together with the 3D environment. Therefore the holographic effect can be observed when the local user is moving around. The proposed solution has been tested and applied in an “experience of future communications” project. Together with the virtual reality system, it provides the users with not only the face-to-face but also the being-there experience.