Title
Real-Time Omnidirectional Stereo Rendering: Generating 360° Surround-View Panoramic Images for Comfortable Immersive Viewing
Department/School
Computer and Information Sciences
Date
2021
Document Type
Article
Keywords
Omnidirectional stereo, 360° panorama, pole merging, real-time rendering, virtual reality
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2021.3067780
Abstract
Surround-view panoramic images and videos have become a popular form of media for interactive viewing on mobile devices and virtual reality headsets. Viewing such media provides a sense of immersion by allowing users to control their view direction and experience an entire environment. When using a virtual reality headset, the level of immersion can be improved by leveraging stereoscopic capabilities. Stereoscopic images are generated in pairs, one for the left eye and one for the right eye, and result in providing an important depth cue for the human visual system. For computer generated imagery, rendering proper stereo pairs is well known for a fixed view. However, it is much more difficult to create omnidirectional stereo pairs for a surround-view projection that work well when looking in any direction. One major drawback of traditional omnidirectional stereo images is that they suffer from binocular misalignment in the peripheral vision as a user's view direction approaches the zenith / nadir (north / south pole) of the projection sphere. This paper presents a real-time geometry-based approach for omnidirectional stereo rendering that fits into the standard rendering pipeline. Our approach includes tunable parameters that enable pole merging - a reduction in the stereo effect near the poles that can minimize binocular misalignment. Results from a user study indicate that pole merging reduces visual fatigue and discomfort associated with binocular misalignment without inhibiting depth perception.
Volume
27
Issue
5
Published in
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Citation/Other Information
Marrinan, T. and Papka, M.E. (2021). Real-Time Omnidirectional Stereo Rendering: Generating 360° Surround-View Panoramic Images for Comfortable Immersive Viewing. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 27(5), 2587-2596. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2021.3067780