Distortion Correction for Immersive Navigation in Spherical Image Environment

The paper presents a new image based rendering method to enable a continuum of position and direction dependent views to be generated from a spherical panoramic image without apparent visual distortion, thereby allowing a user to immerse visually and wander freely within a spherical image environment. Presented in this paper include acquisition of spherical panorama from the real world, construction of a full spherical image environment by texture mapping of the spherical panorama onto a unit sphere, view generation based on viewing position and direction by using a virtual camera placed within the sphere, and correction of image distortion in the generated new views due to spherical surface curvature. Using an outdoor spherical panoramic image as an example, the quality of position and direction dependent views are shown, thereby demonstrating the potential of the proposed method for distortion free immersive navigation.