Data rate smoothing in interactive walkthrough applications using 2D prefetching

Compared to a geometric approach, image based rendering applied to 3D view reconstruction does not require 3D model construction and does not depend on the complexity of the environment. But the large number of images needed for rendering poses a problem of compression and storage. MPEG style algorithms can be used to efficiently compress the data. If the image set has to be accessed through a communication channel, the available bit rate can become a limiting factor in interactive walkthroughs. As the compressed video stream from an MPEG encoder comprises variable rate traffic, different buffering and prefetching techniques can be used to smooth the data rate and thus efficiently utilize the available bit rate. Many interesting aspects arise due to the 2D nature of the problem.