ABSTRACT
Omni-directional capture and display of scenes have a long tradition. Already in the 18th century, the English painter Robert Barker created large accessible panoramas showing a real scene from a particular viewing position, providing an immersive feeling of being there. The step from static scenes to omni-directional capturing of dynamic scenes was showcased at the World Fair of 1900 in Paris using 10 mechanical film cameras and projectors. During the last century, several commercial panoramic video systems followed, e.g., Disney’s Circle Vision 360 or IMAX movie theaters. The advent of high quality digital cameras and projectors simplified the handling and processing of omni-directional video, i.e., the synchronization, calibration, warping, and blending, and made it widely applicable. Nowadays, there exists a large number of different high-resolution, multi-projection systems (Figure 3.1), that are used for immersive omni-directional cinema or presentation of panoramic multimedia events [Fehn et al. 07].
