A multi-user real-time virtual reality system and method

摘要

A high resolution real-time multi-user augmented reality system 10 broadcasts a wide FOV video signal 22 from a plurality of image sources 12 over a distribution channel 24 to a plurality of users 25 that independently select and view different portions 42 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 58 of a virtual sphere 54, 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 46 and remaps them to a flat display 40. The video signals can be augmented with synthetic point-of-interest data such as visual overlays 26 or audio messages 28 that are registered to the video.