Building a Worldwide Photorealistic Virtual Environment by Switching between Subenvironments

A worldwide photorealistic environment includes huge amounts of datasets of different types and scales. It is almost impossible to describe such an environment using single methodology. To manage different types and scales of these datasets, we build and handle virtual subenvironments of different types and scales separately. In addition, we propose an image-based combination method to switch between these local environments smoothly according to the user's viewpoint. We implemented this prototype system in ImmersivProjection Technology (IPT) and demonstrated the efficiency of the method.