Mosaicing impossible stereo views

Most image rendering methods try to mimic real cameras by generating images having the perspective projection. In contrast, a unique power of image mosaicing is the ability to generate new views with "impossible" projections which are not perspective. This can be done with mosaicing methods that construct a panoramic mosaic image by stitching together narrow strips, each strip taken from a different source image. A different selection of strips gives a different mosaicing effect using the same set of source images, including the generation of stereo images. For example, given a sequence of source images from a camera moving sideways, a set of panoramic stereo views can be generated, even though perspective cameras allow only a very narrow view for stereo images. And even though the original (single) camera moved sideways, a sequence of forward moving stereo images can be generated. As each of the stereo views is generated synthetically from the original images, stereo effects can be adjusted in the post production stage. Such effects include changing the stereo baseline and the vergence. Post production enables the same set of original images to be used for generating stereo images for various displays and viewing conditions.