An efficient geometric approach for occlusion handling in outdoors augmented reality applications

Abstract

Mobile location-based AR frameworks typically project information about real or virtual locations in the vicinity of the user. Those locations are treated indiscriminately, regardless of whether they are actually within the field of view (FoV) of the user or not. However, displaying occluded objects often misleads users’ perception thereby compromising the clarity and explicitness of AR applications. This paper introduces an efficient geometric technique aiming at assisting developers of outdoors mobile AR applications in generating a realistic FoV for the users. Our technique enables real time building recognition in order to address the occlusion of physical or virtual objects by physical artifacts. Our method is demonstrated in the location-based AR game Order Elimination. The latter utilizes publicly available building information to calculate the players’ FoV in real-time. Extensive performance tests provide sufficient evidence that real-time FoV rendering is feasible by modest mobile devices, even under stress operation conditions. A user evaluation study reveals that the consideration of buildings for determining FoV in mobile AR games can increase the quality of experience perceived by players when compared with standard FoV generation methods.