One of our research goals is to construct a realism scale, that allows the user to choose the desired level of visual realism in the final image. The higher the realism, the closer the image will appear to look like a photograph. If the user selects a lower realism-level, the gradual decline in realism should appear in the image as smoothly as possible. Preferably, image components that do not contribute to the realistic appearance of the image, should be eliminated from the computations first. Such a realism scale has not yet been constructed in computergraphics.

This talk will focus on some of the recent efforts we have pursued in order to construct such a realism scale. Although we are still far away from this goal, we feel that some of the underlying mechanisms and thoughts are useful enough to warrant discussion, and hopefully provide some additional discussion.