Stereoscopic Cylindrical Screen (SCS) Projection

TL;DR

This work introduces Stereoscopic Cylindrical Screen (SCS) projection to render real-time, head-tracked stereo imagery onto a 360-degree cylindrical display. The pipeline renders the scene to four cubemaps offset by the interpupillary distance and uses bounds-guided sampling for efficient wraparound projection via off-axis geometry. Key contributions include a bounded-face rendering strategy that reduces passes relative to stitching, a cubemap-based sampling method tailored to a cylindrical surface, and demonstrable near-real-time performance (approximately 60 FPS) on a high-end workstation, validated on the CMU ETC CAVERN. The approach enables immersive, multi-user stereo visualization on cylindrical CAVE-like setups and offers practical pathways for integration into professional visualization workflows with potential extensions to more complex curved displays.

Abstract

We present a technique for Stereoscopic Cylindrical Screen (SCS) Projection of a world scene to a 360-degree canvas for viewing with 3D glasses. To optimize the rendering pipeline, we render the scene to four cubemaps, before sampling relevant cubemaps onto the canvas. For an interactive user experience, we perform stereoscopic view rendering and off-axis projection to anchor the image to the viewer. This technique is being used to project virtual worlds at CMU ETC, and is a step in creating immersive viewing experiences.