Revolvable Indoor Panoramas Using a Rectified Azimuthal Projection

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel azimuthal map projection for converting indoor spherical panoramas into wide-angle, overhead-view images, offering adjustable distortion control and complementing existing outdoor scene projections.

Contribution

The paper presents a new azimuthal projection method with an adjustable parameter, enabling better indoor panorama visualization and blending between stereographic and Lambert projections.

Findings

The method produces wide field-of-view overhead images from indoor panoramas.

It allows smooth blending between different azimuthal projections.

The adjustable parameter improves distortion management.

Abstract

We present an algorithm for converting an indoor spherical panorama into a photograph with a simulated overhead view. The resulting image will have an extremely wide field of view covering up to 4{\pi} steradians of the spherical panorama. We argue that our method complements the stereographic projection commonly used in the "little planet" effect. The stereographic projection works well in creating little planets of outdoor scenes; whereas our method is a well-suited counterpart for indoor scenes. The main innovation of our method is the introduction of a novel azimuthal map projection that can smoothly blend between the stereographic projection and the Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection. Our projection has an adjustable parameter that allows one to control and compromise between distortions in shape and distortions in size within the projected panorama. This extra control parameter gives our projection the ability to produce superior results over the stereographic projection.