The faceting signal, defined in this paper as the difference signal between a rendering of the original geometric model and a simplified version of the geometric model, is responsible for the faceting artifacts commonly observed in the renderings of coarse geometric models. We analyze the source of the faceting artifacts and develop a perceptual metric for the visibility of the faceting signal. To illustrate the utility of the faceting signal, we describe two applications. First, we present a perceptually guided level of detail system that accounts for lighting, texturing, distance and other factors that affect the performance of the human visual system. Second, we calculate the lower bound contrast of a texture that can be used to hide the faceting artifacts by using the masking properties of the human visual system.
Lijun Qu, Gary W. Meyer