  We present an overview and evaluation of a new, systematic approach for
generation of highly realistic, annotated synthetic data for training of deep
neural networks in computer vision tasks. The main contribution is a procedural
world modeling approach enabling high variability coupled with physically
accurate image synthesis, and is a departure from the hand-modeled virtual
worlds and approximate image synthesis methods used in real-time applications.
The benefits of our approach include flexible, physically accurate and scalable
image synthesis, implicit wide coverage of classes and features, and complete
data introspection for annotations, which all contribute to quality and cost
efficiency. To evaluate our approach and the efficacy of the resulting data, we
use semantic segmentation for autonomous vehicles and robotic navigation as the
main application, and we train multiple deep learning architectures using
synthetic data with and without fine tuning on organic (i.e. real-world) data.
The evaluation shows that our approach improves the neural network's
performance and that even modest implementation efforts produce
state-of-the-art results.
