7.5 Immersive Photos and Videos

Up until now, this chapter has focused on rendering a virtual world that was constructed synthetically from geometric models. The methods developed over decades of computer graphics research have targeted this case. The trend has recently changed, though, toward capturing real-world images and video, which are then easily embedded into VR experiences. This change is mostly due to the smartphone industry, which has led to hundreds of millions of people carrying high resolution cameras with them everywhere. Furthermore, 3D camera technology continues to advance, which provides distance information in addition to color and light intensity. All of this technology is quickly converging to the case of panoramas, which contained captured image data from all possible viewing directions. A current challenge is to also capture data within a region of all possible viewing positions and orientations.



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Steven M LaValle 2020-11-11