Building a worldwide photorealistic virtual environment by switching between subenvironments

A worldwide photorealistic environment includes huge amounts of datasets of different types and scales. It is almost impossible to describe such an environment using a single methodology. To manage different types and scales of these datasets, we build and handle virtual subenvironments of different types and scales separately. In addition, we propose an image-based combination method to switch between these local environments smoothly according to the user´s viewpoint. We implemented this prototype system in ImmersivProjection Technology (IPT) and demonstrated the efficiency of the method.