FullView Panoramic Cameras

Google Tech Talk
May 27, 2009

ABSTRACT

Presented by Vic Nalwa.

Panoramic and spherical-view cameras today are by and large one of three types:
1. A single camera with wide-angle optics, such as a fisheye lens or curved mirror;
2. Multiple cameras looking out directly in different directions; or
3. Multiple cameras looking out off flat mirrors, which is FullViews patented approach.

Whereas multiple cameras offer much higher resolution than any single camera, multiple cameras looking out directly are in general incapable of producing seamless, artifact-free and blur-free composite images no matter what, because of parallax. FullView evades parallax through its patented approach in which multiple cameras look out off flat mirrors such that all the cameras are effectively looking out in different directions but from the same single viewpoint. As a result, FullViews composite images, whether video or still, and irrespective of their resolution, are always seamless, artifact-free and blur-free, and they provide much higher resolution than outwardly pointing cameras.

(talk based on http://www.fullview.com/Outwardly_Pointing_Cameras.pdf plus more technical details)

Vic Nalwa, President, FullView, Inc., and inventor of the FullView camera technology when he was at Bell Labs

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• google
• tech
• talk
• panoramic
• camera

[AZChopperCam]

it's not 360x360. It's 360x180.  The video is equirectangular projected. Equirectangular projection is twice as wide as it is high. The latitude axis covers 360 degrees. Since the longitude is only half the pixel dimension it is therefore 180 degrees.

[hammaggot]

Its available now. Sony Bloggie Kit w/360 lens.

Cool. When can we expect 360x360 cameras to be available for typical consumers?

[bknumber2]

He is not wrong. If you can look vertically 90 degrees up and 90 degrees down, all the way around a horizontal circle, then the image would cover 360 degrees vertically.

In other words, if you are facing North, and look directly up, it is the same as facing South and looking directly up. Likewise, if you looked directly down, it would not matter which compass direction you were facing. Therefore, the cameras would cover a full 360 degree circle in the vertical axis.

[gigaslam]

He is wrong in saying that the images are 360 by 360. They are 360 by 180. 360 degrees all the way around horizontally. Then if you look 90 degrees down you are looking at your feet and if you look up 90 degrees you are looking straight up into the sky. Strange he would make this mistake.

[jillesvangurp]

Learn to use Hugin if you want to stitch perfect panoramas. It's a great but slightly geeky tool for creating panoramas.

[QuantumAnomaly]

Cool. When can we expect 360x360 cameras to be available for typical consumers?

PhotoStitch is not doing my panoramas any justice.