Hard ware-assisted virtual collisions

Most of the virtual reality applications exhibit complex object interference patterns. Whether based on user interactions with physical objects, or on autonomous object dynamics, collision or interference detection is becoming a fundamental process in VR systems. However, the collision detection task is still an extremely time-consuming and complex process. Most collision detection research is focused on object-space techniques that are purely geometrical in nature. This leaves the rendering pipeline vastly unused from one frame to another, while the collision detection process computes the interference test for all the feature pairs on the main processor. In this article, we propose to balance the collision detection process along the rendering task and at the same time make an effective use of the 3D graphics accelerators,