June 15, 2011

Eyesis outdoor panorama sets and the Viewer/Editor

by Andrey Filippov

WebGL Panorama Editor (view mode)

WebGL Panorama Editor (view mode)

This April we attached Eyesis camera to a backpack and took it to the Southern Utah. Unfortunately I did not finish the IMU hardware then so we could rely only on a GPS for tagging the imagery. GPS alone can work when the camera is on the car, but with a camera moving at pedestrian speed (images were taken 1-1.5 meters apart) it was insufficient even in the open areas with a clear view of the sky. Additionally, camera orientation was changing much more than when it is attached to a car that moves (normally) in the direction the wheels can roll. Before moving forward with the IMU data processing we decided to try to orient/place some of the imagery we took manually – just by looking through the panoramas, adjusting the camera heading/tilt/roll to make them look level and oriented so the next camera location matches the map. Just tweaking the KML file with the text editor seemed impractical to adjust hundreds of panoramic images so we decided to add more functionality to our simple WebGL panorama viewer, make it suitable for both walking through the panorama sets and for the editing orientations and locations of the camera spots. (more…)