Snap Angle Prediction for 360^∘ Panorama
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360^∘ panoramas are a rich medium, yet notoriously difficult to visualize in the 2D image plane. We explore how intelligent rotations of a spherical image may enable content-aware projection with fewer perceptible distortions. Whereas existing approaches assume the viewpoint is fixed, intuitively some viewing angles within the sphere preserve high-level objects better than others. To discover the relationship between these optimal snap angles and the spherical panorama's content, we develop a reinforcement learning approach for the cubemap projection model. Implemented as a deep recurrent neural network, our method selects a sequence of rotation actions and receives reward for avoiding cube boundaries that overlap with important foreground objects. Our results demonstrate the impact both qualitatively and quantitatively.
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