Jeffrey Liu

Home Institution
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year Participated
2022

Year in School
Undergraduate

REU Faculty Mentor
Sarita Adve

Research Area Interest
Architecture, Compilers, and Parallel Computing

Project Title
Spacewarp and Foveated Rendering for VR

Biography & Research Abstract

Abstract:

This work is being done with ILLIXR, which is an open-source extended reality (XR) system and research testbed. The current state of XR does not satisfy the requirements for fully immersive experiences because of the resource constraints in a complex system with many sub-components.

ILLIXR currently supports OpenGL-based OpenXR applications, and provides a native compositor to perform timewarp and distortion correction. The next steps are to support Vulkan-based applications, and also extend the compositor to include spacewarp and support OpenXR composition layers. Once these features are integrated, we can benchmark and analyze its presence in a complete XR system.

Another technique to reduce GPU contention is to introduce foveated rendering, which can alleviate rendering workloads in regions that the user isn't looking at. We want to better understand the tradeoffs that can be made between the accuracy of the eye-tracking and the level of foveation.

Bio:

Currently pursuing a B.S. in Math+CS, I’m interested in how graphics can generate both realistic and interactive experiences.

I have experience working with a variety of graphics APIs, GPU programming languages, and other rendering techniques like raytracing. I’ve also contributed to large-scale projects in a formal software development environment; I integrated a rendering library into BRL-CAD, an open-source CAD software, and I also wrote performance and integration tests during my internship.

I hope to learn more about state-of-the-art graphics technologies so I can design better tools for others to bring their ideas to life.