CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority to Indian Provisional Application No. 202041020351, entitled Reflection Rendering in Computer Generated Environments, filed May 14, 2020.

FIELD

Aspects described herein generally relate to extended reality, such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality, graphics rendering, 3D modeling, server-side rendering, and hardware and software related thereto. More specifically, one or more aspects describe herein provide for server-side rendering of reflections in extended reality environments.

BACKGROUND

Computing devices may generate two- and three-dimensional environments for display on a display device, such as a computer monitor. Generation of three-dimensional environments may entail rendering one or more polygons and texturing such polygons with one or more images. To improve the quality of such three-dimensional environments, lighting effects, such as reflections and shadows, may be simulated. For example, a three-dimensional environment might simulate a light source, and virtual objects in that environment might cast shadows based on their position relative to the light source, and/or may appear to reflect all or portions of the light source if desired. Such three-dimensional environments may be all or portions of an extended reality environment, such as a virtual reality environment, which allow users to look and/or travel around the three-dimensional environment.

SUMMARY

The following presents a simplified summary of various aspects described herein. This summary is not an extensive overview, and is not intended to identify required or critical elements or to delineate the scope of the claims. The following summary merely presents some concepts in a simplified form as an introductory prelude to the more detailed description provided below.

The graphical quality of extended reality (XR) environments (e.g., virtual reality environments, augmented reality environments, and/or mixed reality environments) can be dependent on the processing capabilities of the device(s) providing those environments. For example, some extended reality environments are provided by mobile devices, such as smartphones, but, because those mobile devices often have limited processing capabilities, those environments generally have a low graphical quality and are displayed with a low frame rate. As another example, high-quality, realistic, high frame rate XR environments are generally provided by XR headsets driven by standalone personal computers with powerful processors (e.g., one or more powerful video cards), but such setups can be prohibitively expensive. Whereas a user may already have a smartphone and might spend a relatively low amount of money on a headset for that smartphone, a standalone personal computer-driven virtual reality setup can be significantly more expensive in that it might require a powerful (and expensive) video card to be installed in the personal computer, may require that a user purchase a robust headset with display devices and optics, and may require that the user purchase devices such as motion controllers, motion detecting devices (sometimes referred to as “lighthouses”), and the like.

To overcome limitations described above, and to overcome other limitations that will be apparent upon reading and understanding the present specification, aspects described herein are directed towards remote rendering of reflections of objects in XR environments.

A server may receive, from a client device, an image of a physical environment, the image including different views of the physical environment around the client device. The server may render at least one surface of a virtual object based on the different views of the physical environment, the at least one surface including a reflection of another object of the physical environment from a view point of the client device at a time the image was taken. The server may generate graphics that include the rendered at least one surface of the virtual object of the received image. The server may send the generated graphics to the client device to enable display of a computer generated environment on the client device, the computer generated environment including the at least one virtual object with an appearance of a reflective surface.

A server may receive, from a client device displaying an XR environment, one or more images of a physical environment around the client device. The server may apply the one or more images to virtual environment such that the virtual environment depicts the physical environment around the client device. The server may generate one or more bitmaps of an XR object by performing steps such as rendering the XR object in the virtual environment; and simulating reflections of the virtual environment on at least a portion of the XR object so that the XR object appears to reflect at least a portion of the physical environment around the client device. The server may send, to the client device, the one or more bitmaps for rendering in the XR environment on the client device.

These and additional aspects will be appreciated with the benefit of the disclosures discussed in further detail below.

