Sebastian Hillaire at IRISA Rennes, France

Sebastian Hillaire is a Ph.D student at the IRISA Rennes in France, member of the BUNRAKU and France Telecom R&D. His work is situated around using eye trackers for improving the depth-of-field visual scene in 3D environments. He has published two papers on the topic:

Automatic, Real-Time, Depth-of-Field Blur Effect for First-Person Navigation in Virtual Environment (2008)

"We studied the use of visual blur effects for first-person navigation in virtual environments. First, we introduce new techniques to improve real-time Depth-of-Field blur rendering: a novel blur computation based on the GPU, an auto-focus zone to automatically compute the user’s focal distance without an eye-tracking system, and a temporal filtering that simulates the accommodation phenomenon. Secondly, using an eye-tracking system, we analyzed users’ focus point during first-person navigation in order to set the parameters of our algorithm. Lastly, we report on an experiment conducted to study the influence of our blur effects on performance and subjective preference of first-person shooter gamers. Our results suggest that our blur effects could improve fun or realism of rendering, making them suitable for video gamers, depending however on their level of expertise."

Screenshot from the algorithm implemented in Quake 3 Arena.

• Sébastien Hillaire, Anatole Lécuyer, Rémi Cozot, Géry Casiez
  Automatic, Real-Time, Depth-of-Field Blur Effect for First-Person Navigation in Virtual Environment. To appear in IEEE Computer Graphics and Application (CG&A), 2008 , pp. ??-?? Source code (please refer to my IEEE VR 2008 publication)

Using an Eye-Tracking System to Improve Depth-of-Field Blur Effects and Camera Motions in Virtual Environments (2008)

"We describes the use of user’s focus point to improve some visual effects in virtual environments (VE). First, we describe how to retrieve user’s focus point in the 3D VE using an eye-tracking system. Then, we propose the adaptation of two rendering techniques which aim at improving users’ sensations during first-person navigation in VE using his/her focus point: (1) a camera motion which simulates eyes movement when walking, i.e., corresponding to vestibulo-ocular and vestibulocollic reflexes when the eyes compensate body and head movements in order to maintain gaze on a specific target, and (2) a Depth-of-Field (DoF) blur effect which simulates the fact that humans perceive sharp objects only within some range of distances around the focal distance.

Second, we describe the results of an experiment conducted to study users’ subjective preferences concerning these visual effects during first-person navigation in VE. It showed that participants globally preferred the use of these effects when they are dynamically adapted to the focus point in the VE. Taken together, our results suggest that the use of visual effects exploiting users’ focus point could be used in several VR applications involving firstperson navigation such as the visit of architectural site, training simulations, video games, etc."

Sébastien Hillaire, Anatole Lécuyer, Rémi Cozot, Géry Casiez
Using an Eye-Tracking System to Improve Depth-of-Field Blur Effects and Camera Motions in Virtual Environments. Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality (VR) Reno, Nevada, USA, 2008, pp. 47-51. Download paper as PDF.

QuakeIII DoF&Cam sources (depth-of-field, auto-focus zone and camera motion algorithms are under GPL with APP protection)