SurfaceStreams

Abstract

We present SurfaceStreams, an open-source toolkit for recording and sharing visual content among multiple heterogeneous display-camera systems. SurfaceStreams clients support on-the-fly background removal and rectification on a range of different capture devices (Kinect & RealSense depth cameras, SUR40 sensor, plain webcam). After preprocessing, the raw data is compressed and sent to the SurfaceStreams server, which can dynamically receive streams from multiple clients, overlay them using the removed background as mask, and deliver the merged result back to the clients for display. We discuss an exemplary usage scenario (3-way shared interactive tabletop surface) and present results from a preliminary performance evaluation.