The following blog post has been written to provide a little insight into the final year project that I undertook while at the University of Limerick, Ireland. I have only provided the Abstract, and the results of the Immersive video viewer implementation. With time I will add the details of the success of the Immersive video (mirror pyramid) camera system developed and the resulting immersive video captured.

Abstract
Immersive video is basically video that has been captured using a video camera that is capable of having (up-to) a 360° view of the surrounding world. Once captured, the video containing the full 360° view can be processed in real-time and displayed on-screen with the aid of an immersive video viewer.

After conducting thorough research, a mirror pyramid camera design was chosen for implementation and this work presents a methodology for designing, building and implementing an immersive mirror pyramid video camera system. Work includes the designing and implementing of a mirror pyramid camera system, the building of the physical camera structure, and the writing of capture and image processing software.

In order to demonstrate the functionality of Immersive video and to highlight its key areas of application, an Immersive Video Viewer was also developed to play captured video within a 3-D virtual environment.

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Results of Immersive Video Viewer Implementation

The Immersive video viewer developed allows the playback of videos recorded with the mirror pyramid system and other such panoramic devices capable of recording spherical and cylindrical panoramic videos, and provides a demonstration of the potentials of Immersive video and of the mirror pyramid prototype camera developed.

The Immersive video viewer was developed using an Open Source only development environment: Adobe Flex 3.5 SDK, ActionScript 3.0 and the 3D engine PaperVision3d.

Acknowledgements
The immersive video demos used have been provided for demonstration, with kind permission, by Immersive Media Corp. Permission obtained March 2010.

TroubleShooting
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