From Photogrammetric Reconstruction to Immersive VR Environment

There are several steps to generate a VR environment from images: choose experimental conditions (scene, camera, trajectory, weather), take the images, reconstruct a textured 3D model thanks to a photogrammetry software, and import the 3D model into a game engine. This paper focuses on a post-processing of the photogrammetry step, mostly for outdoor environments that cannot be reconstructed by UAV. Since VR needs a 3D model in a good coordinate system (with a right scale and an axis that is vertical), a simple method is proposed to compute this. In the experiments, we first reconstruct both urban and natural immersive environments by using a helmet-held Gopro Max 360 camera, then import into Unity the 3D models in good coordinate systems, last explore the scenes like a pedestrian thanks to an Oculus Quest.