Importance masks for revealing occluded objects in augmented reality

When simulating "X-ray vision" in Augmented Reality, a critical aspect is ensuring correct perception of the occluded objects position. Naïve overlay rendering of occluded objects on top of real-world occluders can lead to a misunderstanding of the visual scene and a poor perception of the depth. We present a simple technique to enhance the perception of the spatial arrangements in the scene. An importance mask associated with occluders informs the rendering what information can be overlaid and what should be preserved. This technique is independent of scene properties such as illumination and surface properties, which may be unknown. The proposed solution is computed efficiently in a single-pass fragment shaders on the GPU.