View-Adaptive Asymmetric Image Detail Enhancement for 360-degree Stereoscopic VR Content

Abstract

We present a simple VR-specific image detail enhancement method that improves the viewing experience of 360-degree stereoscopic photographed VR contents. By exploiting the fusion characteristics of binocular vision, we propose an asymmetric process that applies detail enhancement to one single image channel only. Our method can dynamically apply the enhancement in a view-adaptive fashion in real-time on most low-cost standalone VR headsets. We discuss the benefits of this method with respect to authoring possibilities, storage and bandwidth issues of photographed VR contents.