In appreciation of High-Performance Computing, modern scientific simulations are scaling into millions and even billions of grid points. As we enter the exa-scale, new strategies are required for visualization and analysis. While Image-Based Rendering (IBR) has emerged as a viable solution to the asymmetry between data size and its storage and required rendering power, it is limited in its 2D image portrayal of 3D spatial objects. This work describes a novel technique to capture, represent, and render depth information in the context of 3D IBR. We tested the value of displacement by displacement map, shading by normal, and image angle interval with our technique. We ran an online user study of 60 participants to evaluate the value of adding depth information back to Image-Based Rendering and found significant benefits. / Master of Science / In scientific research, data visualization is important for better understanding data. Modern experiments and simulations are expanding rapidly in scale, and there will come a day when rendering the entire 3D geometry becomes impossible resource-wise. Cinema was proposed as an image-Based solution to this problem, where the model was represented by an interpolated series of images. However, using flat images cannot fully express the 3D characteristics of a data. Therefore, in this work, we try to improve the depth portrayal of the images by protruding the pixels and applying shading. We show the results of a user study conducted with 60 participants on the effect of pixel protrusion, shading, and varying the number of images representing the object. Results show that this method would be useful for 3D scientific visualizations. The resulting object almost accurately resembles the 3D object.

Many studies have found that fixating or directing spatial attention to different regions can bias the perception of the Necker cube, but whether this effect of spatial attention is due to attended areas perceived as being closer have yet to be examined. This issue was directly investigated in this study. The stimulus used was the diamond stimulus, containing four occluders and four moving lines that can be perceived as coherent or separate motions. The results of Experiment 1 show that coherent motion was perceived more often under the attending-to-occluders condition than under the attending-to-moving-lines condition, indicating that spatial attention can bias multistable perception. The results of Experiment 2 show that the mean probability of reporting lines behind occluders in small binocular disparities was significantly higher under the attending-to-occluders condition than under the attending-to-lines condition, indicating that spatial attention can make attended areas look slightly closer. The results of Experiments 3 and 4 show that the effect of spatial attention on biasing multistable perception was weakened when there were binocular or monocular depth cues to define the depth relationship between the occluders and the lines. These results are all consistent with the notion that spatial attention can bias multistable perception through affecting depth perception, making attended areas look closer.