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Disney Research Creates Megastereo - Panoramas With Depth
mikejuk writes "Disney Research has made a breakthrough in implementing the technique of acquiring depth information from a simple camera scan of a scene. For a perfect panorama you need to rotate the camera around its optical center, i.e. just rotate the camera. However, if you just rotate the camera about itself you don't get any parallax effects — which is why it makes the stitching together easier. If you want to get 3D information from the sequence of shots you need parallax. This means rotating the camera mounted on an offset arm or just moving the camera along an arc in your outstretched hand. The big problem with this method is that the parallax makes it more difficult to fit the mosaic together, and this is the problem that the research team has been working on. Using a range of different scanning methods the results can be converted into high resolution panoramas automatically complete with 3D information."
When I was a kid my dad had a big console stereo in the living room. I believe it's brand was Columbia. It was huge and long, about the size of a sofa.
Back then, Walt Disney had a television show on Sunday nights that everybody watched. He'd personally introduce an interesting short film that we'd all watch.
It's a shame what corporate interests have done to his name.