HiPR: Hierarchical Progressive Rendering for Immediate Feedback

Abstract

Hierarchical Progressive Rendering (HiPR) is a dynamic render-scheduling algorithm that makes interactive path tracing finally feel real-time. While most renderers recompute the entire frame after any change to the scene, our method updates some of the pixels based on a priority order while keeping the others unchanged. Rather than relying on error-driven or temporal reuse heuristics, it amortizes rendering costs by organizing pixels into a hierarchy of light-path dependencies from changed elements outward, prioritizing by perceptual impact and delivering instant visual feedback, while eventually converging to an unbiased result.