The vacuum buffer

When rendering from depth images, an important and difficult task is selecting the subset of depth-image samples that need to be warped to generate the new view. We present the vacuum-buffer algorithm, and its use within a sample-selection method. Like other techniques, our method proceeds by considering samples of reference images that were acquired from locations close to the current camera position. Additionally, our method offers an estimate of whether visible surfaces were potentially missed and points to the scene locations where such surfaces might be. The vacuum buffer is essentially a generalized z-buffer and it measures what subvolumes of the current view-frustum have not been seen by any reference image considered so far.