The OMNIVIDEO software module allows a user to generate novel views from omnidirectional images in real-time (video rate). The optical properties of the OMNICAMERA sensors permit the generation of distortion free (pure perspective) images from an omnidirectional image. This mapping requires only the specification of the viewing direction, the effective focal length (zoom), and the image size parameters. OMNIVIDEO has been developed for PCs running Microsoft Windows NT/95. The present implementation requires the video input device (digitizer) to be a Matrox Meteor frame-grabber.
OMNIVIDEO permits interactive calibration of an OMNICAMERA sensor. The user simply specifies the center and the radius of the omnidirectional image using a graphical interface. This process completes the initialization of the system. The user can then open any number of video ports by an explicit menu command or by clicking on the omnidirectional image. Video ports can show either convention (perspective) images or panoramic (cylindrical) images.
OMNIVIDEO uses a combination of carefully designed datastructures and multi-threaded processes to achieve high effciency in the generation of video streams. On a Pentium Pro PC, OMNIVIDEO can generate 10 or more different video ports (say, 256x256, 24 bit color) at video rate (30 Hz). The parameters (viewing direction, zoom, image size) of each video port can be controlled using either a mouse or a joystick.
Drop by at the entrance of the Computer Science Department (450 Mudd Hall) to experience a live (interactive) demonstration of OMNICAMERA and OMNIVIDEO.
The above picture shows how OMNIVIDEO looks like on your PC. The video port on the top-left corner is an omnidirectional image (OmniImage) of a teleconferencing scenario. The other four video ports (CView1-4) show perspective images of the participants being generated in real-time.