Patent ID: 8217995

Claim:
A system for providing a simulated environment and telepresence using real-world video, the system comprising: a spherical camera positioned to capture real-world video at a first location; one or more head-mounted display devices at a second location, the second location remote from the first location, the one or more head-mounted display devices being positioned to display the captured real-world video from the first location and also to display a simulation corresponding to the real-world video; one or more computers to support the one or more head-mounted displays; a motion capture system being positioned to capture head rotation information for one or more users to control a pan, tilt, and zoom of the real-world video responsive to the captured head rotation information for the one or more users so that when a position of a user's head changes, the portion of the real-world video displayed in the head-mounted display changes accordingly; a virtual reality simulator being positioned to receive CAD design data from a CAD design and to create a three-dimensional virtual reality simulation from the CAD design data so that the one or more head-mounted display devices display the simulation: and a computer program product, stored on a computer readable memory media, operated on a computer, the computer program product comprising a set of instructions that, when executed by the computer, cause the computer to perform the operations of: receiving user input to select between displaying the real-world video and the simulation in the head-mounted display.