System and method for creating interactive panoramic walk-through applications

Abstract

System and method of the invention provides for creating, storing and broadcasting interactive panoramic walk-through applications. The combination of images is determined by the user's choice of direction of displacement at each intersection point and from each view point or geographical coordinate, in order to provide a complete view from a first person's point of view. The system provides a visual perspective comparable to a human visual experience.

Description

[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 111,346, entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CREATING AND BROADCASTING INTERACTIVE PANORAMIC WALK-THROUGH APPLICATIONS, filed Nov. 5, 2008.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates generally to virtual tours. More specifically, the present invention relates to virtual walk-through applications using panoramic images, 3D images or a combination of both.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]A virtual tour (or virtual reality tour) is a virtual reality simulation of an existing location, which is usually built using contents consisting principally of 2D panoramic images, sequence of linked still images or video sequences, and / or image-based rendering (IBR) consisting of image-based models of existing physical locations, as well as other multimedia content such as sound effects, music, narration, and text. A virtual tour is accessed on a personal computer (typically connected to the Internet) or a mob...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0038]It is another object of the present invention to provide a system or method for creating and broadcasting inter

Problems solved by technology

Current virtual tours photographic techniques suffer from several limitations.

Images captured from a single camera rotating on its nodal point can be stitched seamlessly but this solution can not be used for applications involving axial translation, where, for example, images are captured from a vehicle in motion.

This method consumes significant processing power and bandwidth for respectively correcting and transmitting the images whenever fast user motion is involved during navigation, and is therefore not optimal for providing a seamless navigation experience at relatively high user directed panning speed.

Limitations of current virtual tour technology, such as object occlusion, have had the detrimental result on virtual tours never materializing outside of the real estate industry.

These products are limited to outdoor views wherein any two consecutive points of view are positioned at a relatively long distance from each other.

Such panoramic images can not provide accurate representation of geometric objects, of for example buildings, due to the inherent discontinuity (break) of such panoramic images, this discontinuity is due to the physical impossibility of superposing a single nodal point from multiple cameras and view angles.

Furthermore, “STREET VIEW” products and the like provide images which suffer from trapezoidal distortion whenever the view angle is not pointing toward the horizon; this distortion is due to the perspective.

Although geometrically correct, “STREET VIEW”'s images do not reflect human vision behaviours, which keep vertical lines mostly parallel whenever a viewer tilts its view gently above or below the horizon.

Google “STREET VIEW” also creates ground plane distortion where planar ground seems to be inclined due to the unwanted motion of the cameras caused by the inertial force.

Other current walk-through products, such as “EVERYSCAPE” (www.everyscape.com by Everyscape, Waltham, Mass.) and “EARTHMINE” (www.earthmine.com by Earthmine inc., Berkeley, Calif.) also produce trapezoidal distortion, which makes them unfit for applications requiring continuous undistorted images (i.e. images which more closely correspond to human vision), as for example, for virtual shopping.

The trapezoidal distortion drawback is inherent also to virtual walk-through applications based on 3D virtual images, which can be used for

Images