Semi-Automatic Method for Creating Virtual Reality Environments

Traditional virtual reality environments are based on rendering all the surroundings using 3D models of objects. This requires graphically modelling the whole environment, which is usually a long and tedious task. 360-degree cameras that have recently become commercially available might be able to change that situation, as image-based virtual reality requires no graphical modelling and therefore has the promise of being faster with the results resembling the real world more accurately. The downside of this approach is the requirement to create a separate image for each possible location in the scene that is being captured, thus resulting in a large number of images that need to be labelled, so that navigation between images would become possible. This thesis investigates possible methods to create such maps semi-automatically and provides an interface to display the virtual reality environments so created.