Scanning scene tunnel for city traversing

This paper proposes a visual representation named scene tunnel for capturing urban scenes along routes and visualizing them on the Internet. We scan scenes with multiple cameras or a fish-eye camera on a moving vehicle, which generates a real scene archive along streets that is more complete than previously proposed route panoramas. Using a translating spherical eye, properly set planes of scanning, and unique parallel-central projection, we explore the image acquisition of the scene tunnel from camera selection and alignment, slit calculation, scene scanning, to image integration. The scene tunnels cover high buildings, ground, and various viewing directions and have uniformed resolutions along the street. The sequentially organized scene tunnel benefits texture mapping onto the urban models. We analyze the shape characteristics in the scene tunnels for designing visualization algorithms. After combining this with a global panorama and forward image caps, the capped scene tunnels can provide continuous views directly for virtual or real navigation in a city. We render scene tunnel dynamically by view warping, fast transmission, and flexible interaction. The compact and continuous scene tunnel facilitates model construction, data streaming, and seamless route traversing on the Internet and mobile devices.