Integration of Real and Virtual Light Sources in Augmented Reality Worlds

A number of issues need to be taken into consideration for the output of an augmented reality application to appear realistic. Such issues include the level of detail of the virtual scene, the accuracy of alignment between the two worlds and the correspondence of illumination between the real and virtual components. This paper reviews registration techniques used to perform the alignment process and discusses a research project that investigates methods matching light conditions. Although a number of registration techniques exist, feature based registration has not yet achieved popularity within production environments because of the associated difficulties. Instead, fiducial marker based systems are being implemented for their robustness and ease of implementation. Further work to be undertaken is discussed towards the end of the paper.