Hybrid orbiting-to-photos in 3D reconstructed visual reality

Virtually navigating through photos from a 3D image-based reconstruction has recently become very popular in many applications. In this paper, we consider a particular virtual travel maneuver that is important for this type of virtual navigation---orbiting to photos that can see a point-of-interest (POI). The main challenge with this particular type of orbiting is how to give appropriate feedback to the user regarding the existence and information of each photo in 3D while allowing the user to manipulate three degrees-of-freedom (DoF) for orbiting around the POI. We present a hybrid approach that combines features from two baselines---proxy plane and thumbnail approaches. Experimental results indicate that users rated our hybrid approach more favorably for several qualitative questionnaire statements, and that the hybrid approach is preferred over both baselines for outdoor scenes.