Creation of three dimensional dome contents using layered images

In the dome display environment, it is known that three-dimensional scene can be represented utilizing the effects of geometrical perspective and motion parallax effectively without using the stereo glasses. However, the creation of contents for the dome display is not easy, because it needs omni-directional images. In this study, we propose the layer based method to create the dome contents easily. This method generates three-dimensional contents by placing two-dimensional image elements in the space and moving them or using the camera work effectively. In particular, in this paper, the depth sensation felt from the layered image was measured quantitatively and the necessary number of layers to represent the three-dimensional image was discussed based on the psychophysical experiments. Moreover, several dome contents were created using the proposed method and the effectiveness of this method was evaluated.