Frame Cache Management for Multi-frame Rate Systems

Multi-frame rate systems decouple viewing from rendering in an asynchronous pipeline. Multiple GPUs can be used as frame sources, while a primary GPU is responsible for viewing and display update. Conventionally, the last rendering result is used for display. However, modern GPUs are equipped with a fairly large amount of memory which allows frames to be cached in video memory. As long as the data is static, caching allows for a more sophisticated reference frame selection that increases the output quality. With a growing frame database, images for most viewpoints can be queried from the cache and the system converges into a conventional image-based rendering system. However, multi-frame rate systems use purely virtual image sources. As a consequence, the rendering process can be actively steered by the viewing process, which allows for advanced strategies. Moreover, by picking multiple reference frames from the cache, we can avoid display artifacts arising from occlusions.