Globally and locally optimized Pannini projection for high FoV rendering of 360° images

To render a spherical (360° or omnidirectional) image on planar displays, a 2D image - called as viewport - must be obtained by projecting a sphere region on a plane, according to the user's viewing direction and a predefined field of view (FoV). However, any sphere to plan projection introduces geometric distortions, such as object stretching and/or bending of straight lines, which intensity increases with the considered FoV. In this paper, a fully automatic content-aware projection is proposed, aiming to reduce the geometric distortions when high FoVs are used. This new projection is based on the Pannini projection, whose parameters are firstly globally optimized according to the image content, followed by a local conformality improvement of relevant viewport objects. A crowdsourcing subjective test showed that the proposed projection is the most preferred solution among the considered state-of-the-art sphere to plan projections, producing viewports with a more pleasant visual quality.