Patent ID: 8619083

Claim:
A system for providing continuous zooming animation, said system comprising: a memory area for storing an image for display, said memory area further storing a plurality of image layers; and a processor programmed to: provide the image for display on a computing device; receive a zoom request from a user of the computing device; obtain, responsive to the received zoom request, a plurality of image layers ordered by increasing resolution; produce a blended image having a final resolution equal to a resolution of a last image layer by performing multiple iterations on the obtained image layers starting with a first image layer having a lowest resolution and ending with the last image layer having a highest resolution, each iteration comprising: upsampling the image layer to a next higher resolution associated with a next image layer; and blending the upsampled image layer with said next image layer; and provide the produced, blended image having the final resolution equal to the resolution of the last image layer for display on the computing device; wherein producing the blended image having the final resolution equal to the resolution of the last image layer has an overhead cost bounded by a constant factor multiplied by a quantity of pixels associated with the highest resolution.