Diminished reality

Diminished reality (DR) is the process of using technology for eliminating or diminishing objects that exist in our visual perception by using tools such as inpainting. It does not lie along with the traditional immersive technologies, since it does not explicitly mix reality types. Nevertheless, diminished reality can be used in conjunction with AR to provide high-quality experiences to the users.

Immersive technologies as VR (Virtual Reality) AR (Augmented Reality), MR (Mixed Reality) have become more and more significant, as their contribution to enhancing our standard of living is crucial. These technologies integrate virtual and/or real-world elements to provide unique experiences to the users.

Many practical applications of those technologies have been presented, with one of them being interior design. Such an AR application, typically runs on a tablet, laptop PCs, or smartphones and augments new furniture or other objects on top of images. For this purpose, an important feature would be to show what specific furniture may look like in the actual setting while keeping the existing photorealism.

For example, if you want to see what a furniture would look like in your living room, you can diminish the existing one and afterward place a virtual one in the space where it used to be. One practical issue with such applications is the fact that usually, houses are furnished, and by directly superimposing objects on top of other, the realism that depicts the scene deteriorates. To alleviate this issue, diminished reality is utilized, making it feasible to keep the illusion of the augmented co-existence.

We wish to replace our depicted objects with new ones. If we place the new objects above the old ones, the result will be unrealistic, as you see in the below images. The first row corresponds to panorama images whilst the second corresponds to perspective views.