Patent ID: 6967651
Filing Date: 2005-11-22
Classification: G06F,G06T

Abstract:
1. An image display method for arranging and displaying images in a virtual 3D space, comprising: a process of reading in image data of at least one image; a process of reading in information about an arrangement of the images in the virtual 3D space; a spatial viewpoint setting/shifting process in which setting and shifting of a spatial viewpoint is specified with parameters including a viewpoint position and a line of sight direction in the virtual 3D space; a process of converting original shapes of the read-in image data by a parallel expansion projection process including a parallel shifting process regarding the directions in which the images are seen from the spatial viewpoint and an expansion/shrinking process regarding their size, based on a relation between the information about the arrangement of the images in the virtual 3D space and the spatial viewpoint information, and determining a simplified 2D arrangement expressing 2D arrangement of the images seen from the spatial viewpoint as a 2D arrangement of images with shapes that are similar to the original images and a process of rotating an original shape of the read-in image data into an angle of multiples of 90°, based on the relation between the information about the arrangement of the images in the virtual 3D space and the spatial viewpoint information; a display image creation process of creating displayed images by processing the read-in image data in accordance with the determined simplified 2D arrangement of the images; and a process of displaying the created display images on a display device.