Virtual objects on real oceans

Augmented Reality (AR) aims to provide means to integrate vir- tual objects in a real scene. In that context it is often necessary to recover geometrical information such as objects shapes from the scene in order to add new objects. This paper proposes a semi- automatic method to reconstruct the surface of the ocean from a real ocean scene. A detection algorithm is applied to identify sig- nificant waves crestlines. A virtual ocean is then reconstructed us- ing Gerstner model; its parameters are inferred and adjusted by the user to match the crestlines and to provide a smooth reconstruc- tion between adjacent waves. An application is presented to insert a virtual object in the real ocean scene that computes correct occlu- sions between the ocean surface and the object and uses OpenGL for real-time rendering.