Realistic real-time rain rendering

Real-time rendering of virtual weather conditions has been investigated in many papers. Inserting fog or snow in a scene is rather straightforward. Rain is one of the most encountered natural phenomena, but its rendering often lacks realism.In this paper, we propose a realistic real-time rain rendering method using programmable graphics hardware. In order to simulate the refraction of the scene inside a raindrop, the scene is captured to a texture which is distorted according to optical properties of raindrops. This texture is mapped onto each raindrop. Our method also takes into account retinal persistence, and interaction with light sources.