Interactive Streaming of Panoramas and VR Worlds

Virtual Reality (VR) has recently become a hot topic in the media industry. VR systems enable the user to navigate in real or virtual worlds. The dimensions of these worlds may range from 180 degree cylinders up to complete 360 degree spheres. Such systems require cameras, which are able to capture these worlds and transmission systems, which enable users to view these worlds on their VR devices. Fraunhofer HHI has developed an interactive streaming system, which provides highest quality and does not limit the image resolution neither on the production nor on the end device side. It consists of one or several omnidirectional cameras, which can be placed into a scene like sport stadiums, theatres, fairs etc. In HHI's OmniCam360 there are 10 micro HD cameras, delivering a 360 degree panorama of 10.000 × 1.920 pixels. As the data rate of such video is by far too high to be transmitted to an end device, three solutions to stream the content to end devices have been developed. A user can then interactively navigate in the panorama.