Image Orientation for Interactive Tours of Virtually-modeled Sites

This paper addresses the issue of image orientation for interactive tours. We consider situations where image sequences are captured in an urban site for which a virtual-model is already available. We present an approach that allows us to capture the orientation of these images using as control information building façades (instead of traditional points). Our approach allows us to orient image sequences relative to few absolutely oriented frames, devising an innovative version of dependent orientation for ground-level motion imagery. We present theoretical issues behind our approach and experimental results that demonstrate accuracies of 0.1 degrees in rotation estimation, and 0.15 meters in camera position determination. 1 This paper is a modified version of an upcoming publication to appear in the journal Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing