An Interactive Camera Placement and Visibility Simulator for Image-Based VR Applications

We describe an interactive software simulator that assists with the design of multi-camera setups for applications such as image-based virtual reality, three-dimensional reconstruction from still or video imagery, surveillance, etc. Instead of automating the camera placement process, our goal is to assist a user by means of a simulator that supports interactive placement and manipulation of multiple cameras within a pre-modeled three-dimensional environment. It provides a real-time 3D rendering of the environment, depicting the exact coverage of each camera (including indications of occluded and overlap regions) and the effective spatial resolution on the surfaces. The simulator can also indicate the dynamic coverage of pan-tilt-zoom cameras using “traces” to highlight areas that are reachable within a user-selectable interval. We describe the simulator, its underlying “engine” and its interface, and we show an example multi-camera setup for remote 3D medical consultation, including preliminary 3D reconstruction results.