The InterDigital Imaging Science Lab’s demo on Point Cloud Compression, presented by Céline Guede and Ralf Schaefer, built upon the HEVC video coding standard to showcase the vital need for video compression mechanisms to enjoy increasingly immersive and interactive video experiences in VR, AR, and 3D imagery.

Point Clouds are sets of tiny “points” grouped together to make a 3D image. Point Cloud has become a popular method for AR and VR video composition, 3D cultural heritage and modeling, and geographic maps for autonomous cars. While this method has many benefits, it is important to remember that each Point Cloud video frame typically has 800,000 points, which translates to 1,5000 MBps uncompressed – a massive amount of video bandwidth. To address this challenge, our Imaging Science Lab has participated in the development of a Point Cloud Compression method being standardized in MPEG to support widespread industry adoption of the Point Cloud format for immersive video. InterDigital showcased its video-based Point Cloud Compression capabilities in a Point Cloud-created AR video demo streamed to a commercially available smartphone in real-time. This technique will support the crisp, low-latency deployment of immersive video experiences through existing network infrastructure and devices.