Multi-user real-time augmented reality system and method

摘要

A high resolution real-time multi-user augmented reality system broadcasts a wide FOV video signal from a plurality of image sources over a distribution bus to a plurality of users that independently select and view different portions of the video signal such that the angular resolution of the displayed video signal is constant over the range of possible viewing orientations. This is accomplished by assuming that each user's position is fixed at the center of a virtual sphere, the image sources' positions are known relative to the center of the virtual sphere, and that the users are looking at a portion of the inner surface of the sphere. As a result, the "flat" images generated by the image sources and the "flat" images viewed by the users can be efficiently mapped onto the virtual sphere and represented as index pairs (d,n). Thus, each user extracts those pixels on the virtual sphere corresponding to the user's current FOV and remaps them to a flat display. The video signals can be augmented with synthetic point-of-interest data such as visual overlays or audio messages that are registered to the video.