Combining 360° Video and Camera Mapping for Virtual Reality: An Innovative Solution

Changing the framework of traditional video with limited viewing angles, 360° photo/video provides an immersive viewing experience. 360° video is one of the applications and the most important feature of virtual reality for immersion and the feeling of being in another space. However, when viewing 360° videos with a head-mounted display, the viewer feels like a fixed rotatable camera, and the viewer's movement does not change the viewing angle of the object, which greatly reduces the spatial immersion required for virtual reality. Therefore, we propose a solution that maintains high-quality graphics and low hardware demands and supports 6DoF head-mounted displays. Through the camera mapping function in the 3D animation software, 360° surround video is projected into a 3D sphere to create a simple 3D object that corresponds to the shape of the object in the image. With pristine video quality and a realistic 3D spatial perspective, it provides better virtual reality immersion than 360° video and is not as complex as a full 3D virtual reality environment. In the future, 3D scanning and photogrammetry can be integrated to reconstruct a more easily applied 3D virtual reality environment.