Intermediate cubic-panorama synthesis based on triangular re-projection

Image-based rendering (IBR) techniques provide a powerful tool for implementing free navigation in image-based virtual environments. Panoramas can produce an immersive and omnidirectional display of the virtual environment. This paper addresses the synthesis of virtual intermediate cubic panoramas given several reference panoramas. A 2D/3D complex triangular meshing representation of the scene is used to render the desired view, which involves solving a variety of visibility issues due to occlusion and disocclusion. The generalized disparity-based homography transformation can project these 2D/3D triangles onto the desired view in the sense of perspective accuracy. In addition, special measures are taken to handle the difficulties caused by the edge discontinuity of cubic panoramas. The experimental results show that we can obtain photo-realistic virtual images with high fidelity, indicating this is an effective approach for virtual cubic-panorama synthesis.