Television – Camera – system and detail – With electronic viewfinder or display monitor
Reexamination Certificate
1998-05-04
2001-10-23
Garber, Wendy R. (Department: 2612)
Television
Camera, system and detail
With electronic viewfinder or display monitor
C345S008000, C345S009000, C348S222100, C348S333100, C348S352000, C348S375000, C396S051000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06307589
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to the presentation of images and, more particularly, to the presentation of successive images.
BACKGROUND ART
Still photography, motion pictures and television were influenced by the way artists represented physical reality in paintings, as if through a window. A highly detailed perspective image is provided, typically within a rectangular frame. All provide highly detailed images which induce the viewer to cooperate with the cameraman's “vision” by assuming the artificial perspective of the representation. The viewer is enabled to deliberately suspend disbelief that the images themselves are not a real object space. The degree to which the viewer is thus enabled is influenced not only by the image resolution but by the field of view. It is usually thought desirable to increase both. For example, very high resolution commercial television standards have been formulated for increasing image quality. Such approaches typically increase the number of horizontal lines scanned to a number significantly greater than present standards. Larger format movie film such as 70 mm has been used to increase detail. Also, panoramic movies, e.g., “Cinerama” increased the field of view to increase realism. Various stereoscopic television approaches have also been conceived or developed to increase realism.
All of these traditional media take a rather objective view of the physical world. The image is framed by a window through which the viewer can gaze in any direction “into” a representation of an object space. Events are presented in both movies and television in a series of different action scenes in a story line which the viewer can observe from a seemingly quasi-omniscient point of view. The viewer is led to take what appears to be a view of the world as it really is. Yet the choice of image and its perspective is picked by the creator of the image and the viewer actually assumes a passive role. “Virtual reality,” in an electronic image context, goes even further in the direction of increased realism but enables the viewer to take a more active role in selecting the image and even the perspective. It means allowing a viewer's natural gestures, i.e., head and body movements, by means of a computer, to control the imaged surroundings, as if the viewer were seeing and even moving about in a real environment of seeing, hearing and touching. Due to the myriad of possible actions of the viewer, a corresponding multiplicity of virtual activities needs to be available for viewer choice. This would represent the ultimate in artificial experience.
But the creation of many possible scenarios for viewer selection creates a massive demand for electronic image storage space and there is also the problem of a disconcerting time lag between the viewer's action and the response of the imaging system. These problems make this emerging technology hard to achieve using presently available hardware.
And it would seem impossible to carry out such a heightened artificial experience using motion picture technology.
DISCLOSURE OF INVENTION
The object of the present invention is to provide a new method and means of presenting images in succession.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, images simulative of active percepts are provided for passive perception.
Simulated percepts, according to the present invention, permit a viewer to experience percepts as if inside the head of another person.
The simulated active percepts may be presented “live” or may be stored and retrieved from storage and presented for passive perception. In the case of stored simulated active percepts, since there is only one set of images to store, the memory problem of the prior art is solved. Similarly, for the “live” case, since the simulated active percept is provided as created there is no storage requirement at all. Moreover, by providing simulated active percepts for passive perception, there is no longer any time lag problem. Since the simulated active percepts induce the viewer to emulate those physical actions which would've created the simulated active percepts, the hardware need not be faster or as fast as the viewer. In fact, it may be much slower. Although the viewer is relegated to a rather passive role, the novelty and richness of the virtual reality experience more than compensates in opening a whole new world of opportunity for representing reality.
In further accord with this aspect of the present invention, the images simulative of active percepts are nonuniform images. The human visual apparatus does not resolve images uniformly, since the human eye's retina converts optical images cast upon it with nonuniform resolution. The portion of the image about the axis of the observer's gaze is cast on the fovea centralis, for high detail perception of the image information, while peripheral image areas are cast on the remainder of the retina for perception with less detail. Thus, there is a fundamental mismatch between the traditional manner of pictorially representing, with uniform resolution, the objects which constitute physical reality and the manner in which we actually sense it.
Although the visual apparatus senses the details of objects nonuniformly, human perception is of objects having uniform resolution. Such perception is formed by integrating a series of fixations over time. To complicate matters, any given observer's point of view within an object space is not generally kept stable at all. As the observer moves about with three translational degrees of freedom in the object space his head may continually be changing its orientation as permitted by its three rotational degrees of freedom. At the same time, the observer's eyes, with three rotational degrees of freedom of their own, are continually fixating on different objects within that space. There is no experience of disorientation because the observer senses that the object space is stable with respect to his head and eyes moving about under self-impetus. A sense of balance is lent by the mechanism of the inner ear. In addition, visual clues, including nasal and eye orbital shadows indicate the present orientation of the head with respect to that of the eyes and with respect to the object space.
In the case of paintings and still photography, the point of view is of course unchanging. But, even for movies and TV, a given point of view, once acquired, is kept rather stable and is generally changed only very slowly to avoid viewer disorientation. Most have experienced some discomfort when viewing a stable movie or TV image which is suddenly moved quickly in a lateral direction or which suddenly tilts from its normally horizontal orientation. This effect is due to the upset of a stable, uniform image of an object space which purports to represent or substitute for physical reality. To upset the frame is akin, according to the perception of the viewer, to upsetting the object space itself. Hence, the discomfort.
Thus, there is also a fundamental mismatch between the traditional technique of static or quasi-static image presentation used in the movie and consumer TV media, described above, and the manner in which images are actually gathered and experienced by an observer using his human visual apparatus. I.e., where the observer may quickly move about in an object space, in a process of frequently changing his point of view and his gaze in order to acquire visual information from all directions concerning his surroundings.
In keeping with these teachings, in further accord with the first aspect of the present invention, images are presented to simulate movement of the observer's eye's orbital shadow, i.e., the overall direction of view with respect to the object space for stimulating the passive viewer to execute analogous head movements.
In further keeping with these teachings, in still further accord with the first aspect of the present invention, nonuniform resolution images are presented which simulate ductions of a simulated eye with respect to the simu
Garber Wendy R.
Vu Ngoc-Yen
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