Forum Discussion
3D Streetview?
I am interested in trying to capture a static image sphere using 2 cameras in order to create a streetview like stereoscopic 3d experience, where the user wearing the Rift can pan around the image by ...
Shooting and stitching spherical panoramic images captured from a nodal position is a standard method of panoramic photographers. To extend this method to stereoscopic panoramas, I have moved the camera from the nodal position to the left and to the right, as if the camera were on a stereo bar. The bar rotates about the nodal position in each panoramic sequence of shots. (This is equivalent to viewing a scene where you are looking all around, and your head is turning about a point located between your two eyes.) For my Oculus Rift tests this provides three sequences of images suitable for stitching into three stereoscopically-related spherical panoramas.
When stitched together, the three spherical panoramas (left, nodal/center, and right) are each encoded in the standard 2:1 format corresponding to the 360 degree:180 degree capture. This 2:1 data must now be fed to the left and right eye displays of the Oculus Rift. These three stereoscopically-related spherical panoramas can also display the effects of the different lens separations, which should be of interest.
HOW TO FEED PHOTOGRAPHICALLY-DERIVED SPHERICAL IMAGES TO THE OCULUS RIFT is what I am now examining.
(For me, combining a multitude of subject-related images to create a 3d computer graphic space [which is an extraordinary activity and accomplishment!] is different from the task of simply displaying spherical stereoscopic images viewable on head-tracked goggles.)
For game makers my task may seem trivial: feeding photographically-obtained left and right-eye images to the Oculus Rift to generate a static stereo CG image, a 3d stereo pair of spherical panoramas suitable for head-tracking display.
For photographers or movie makers, there may be something else to consider. For instance, the differences between a spherical image captured in the described, standard photographic way and stitched together, versus a spherical image captured in a non-standard way: using a rotating slit camera (on a stereo bar) with a fisheye lens and a spherical, linear sensor array to obtain the same images WITHOUT stitching. Such slit cameras do exist. And with such a camera you would make, for comparison, three non-stitched images matching the three stitched images already described. This would allow you to look for artifacts resulting from stitching. This concerns me because I would expect stitching errors to be a problem, but not a show-stopper.
(Concerning the Google Street-Views, these are shot with a different, curved mirror capture method. I look forward to also including this approach, but I am currently using available equipment that can produce panoramas of high resolution suitable for movies and whatever.)
Bruce Lane
When stitched together, the three spherical panoramas (left, nodal/center, and right) are each encoded in the standard 2:1 format corresponding to the 360 degree:180 degree capture. This 2:1 data must now be fed to the left and right eye displays of the Oculus Rift. These three stereoscopically-related spherical panoramas can also display the effects of the different lens separations, which should be of interest.
HOW TO FEED PHOTOGRAPHICALLY-DERIVED SPHERICAL IMAGES TO THE OCULUS RIFT is what I am now examining.
(For me, combining a multitude of subject-related images to create a 3d computer graphic space [which is an extraordinary activity and accomplishment!] is different from the task of simply displaying spherical stereoscopic images viewable on head-tracked goggles.)
For game makers my task may seem trivial: feeding photographically-obtained left and right-eye images to the Oculus Rift to generate a static stereo CG image, a 3d stereo pair of spherical panoramas suitable for head-tracking display.
For photographers or movie makers, there may be something else to consider. For instance, the differences between a spherical image captured in the described, standard photographic way and stitched together, versus a spherical image captured in a non-standard way: using a rotating slit camera (on a stereo bar) with a fisheye lens and a spherical, linear sensor array to obtain the same images WITHOUT stitching. Such slit cameras do exist. And with such a camera you would make, for comparison, three non-stitched images matching the three stitched images already described. This would allow you to look for artifacts resulting from stitching. This concerns me because I would expect stitching errors to be a problem, but not a show-stopper.
(Concerning the Google Street-Views, these are shot with a different, curved mirror capture method. I look forward to also including this approach, but I am currently using available equipment that can produce panoramas of high resolution suitable for movies and whatever.)
Bruce Lane