Fast Visualization of Complex 3D Models Using Displacement Mapping: This looks like a combination of the “sparse voxel ray casting” approach popularized by id software with “relief mapping” approaches.

Depth of Field Postprocessing for Layered Scenes Using Constant-Time Rectangle Spreading: This is closely related to one of my favorite I3D 2009 posters, “Faster Filter Spreading and Its Applications”.  The basic idea (which has also been discussed in this paper by Dan Piponi) is to “splat” rectangles in constant time (independent of the rectangle size!) by “splatting” just the corners into a buffer, from which a summed-area table is constructed (using existing fast methods), yielding the desired image.  This can be extended to more general splats.  Although there is no preprint yet, the tech report is available.

An Analytical Approach to Single Scattering for Anisotropic Media and Light Distributions:  A follow-on paper to one published in Eurographics 2009, it adds anisotropic phase functions and more general lighting.  The basic solution is similar to an earlier paper by Bo Sun and others, but using a slightly different approach that enables increased precision.

Rendering the Effect of Labradorescence: This is of interest to me as an optical reflectance geek, but I doubt anyone will be using it in a game anytime soon.  This paper presents a physically-based method of rendering a complex optical phenomena that exists in gems such as Labradorite and Spectrolite.

Ke-Sen Huang’s Graphics Interface 2009 page should be a good place to hunt for preprints of these papers as they appear.