The Holodeck: A Parallel Ray-caching Rendering System
Gregory Ward Larson · 1998
This paper presents a new data structure for light field rendering, which resembles a Star Trek holodeck in form and function. The grid on a holodeck section acts as a fourdimensional rendering target for a ray tracing algorithm, whose goal is to update an interactive display. A holodeck server coordinates separate ray evaluation and display processes, optimizing disk and memory usage. Holodeck data may also be computed off-line, and displayed later with or without an interactive ray calculation. Since the rendering hardware is not being taxed by either geometry or lighting, the net result is interactive walk-throughs of complex spaces with arbitrary surface reflection functions.