Stereoscopic 3D transitions between images

The following documents eight geometric transitions that were created in order to transition (in an interesting way) between a pair of 360 degree cylindrical panoramas, although they could equally be applied between any two images. The intended environment is a 360 degree cylindrical display that is stereoscopic enabled, that is, the transition effects are designed to occur in 3D in order to leverage the available depth perception. While the panorama images are monoscopic, and appear at the depth of the screen, the 3D transition geometry is rendered as an omnidirectional stereoscopic panorama (ODSP). As such, multiple people in the cylindrical display, all looking in different directions, have a valid stereoscopic experience.

In general, each transition is parametrised with respect to the scale of the transition primitives, the duration, the depth conveyed and the direction of transition. Note that the 3D'ness needs to "grow" out of a flat 2D image such that the resulting start and end image are unaffected. For example, there is no jump or other effect at the start or end of the sequence.

Low resolution previews of each transition movie are supplied below but they are normally generated at the native resolution of the cylindrical display. The transitions (and previews) are supplied as top bottom stereoscopic pairs (left on top, right on bottom). The cylindrical panorama images used in the illustrative movies are extracted (sphere2pano software) from a large set of gigapixel equirectangular images captured from significant buildings in Macau.

Ripple slats.
The image is divided into vertical slats that rotate about the horizontal axis. The rotations ripple across the extend of the panorama. The front of the slat is textured with the source image, the back with the destination image. In the case here the 360 degree cylinder has a radius and height of 4m, so the slats virtually enter the cylinder (negative parallax) by 2m. This depth budget was used consistently across all the transitions.

Random slats.
Similar to the above but the slats are randomly delayed such that the starting and destination image disappear and are revealed in an unordered way over duration of the transition.

Windows.
This is a 2D version of the above where each slat is now a rectangle. The front of the rectangle is textured with the source image, the back with the destination image. In order to achieve a depth effect the rectangles drift into the cylinder while rotating about their horizontal axis. Any axis can be chosen for the rotation which serves to hide the source image and then reveal it on the back side of the window.

Large windows.
This is similar to the above except the rectangular windows are much larger and the depth effect can be created without drifting the rectangles into the cylinder.

Relocation balls.
The image is spit into small spheres which travel to the same position horizontally but offset by a chosen angle, in the example here, 120 degrees. The order in which the spheres start their migration is random. The spheres are textured with a transition between the start and destination image.

Ripple balls.
The image is split into small balls which lie on a cylinder perpendicular to the image. This cylinder, and the balls, grow until it is half the radius of the 360 display cylinder, it rotates revealing the destination image, before shrinking back to original size.

Cylinder rotations.
The image is decomposed into narrow cylinders perpendicular to the screen surface. The front half of the cylinder is textured with the start image, the back half of the cylinder is textured with the destination image. The cylinders, of radius 2m, rotate about their vertical axis.

Large ball rotations.
The image is decomposed into spheres. The front of the sphere (initially) is textured with the start image, the back half of the sphere is textured with the destination image. The sphere rotate through 180 degrees in a user selected direction while at the same time either entering the cylindrical display or receding further away.