Two recent innovations in immersive media include the ability to capture very high resolution panoramic imagery, and the rise of consumer level heads-up displays for virtual reality. Unfortunately, zooming to examine the high resolution in VR breaks the basic contract with the user, that the FOV of the visual field matches the FOV of the imagery. In this paper, we study methods to overcome this restriction to allow high resolution panoramic imagery to be able to be explored in VR. We introduce and test new interface modalities for exploring high resolution panoramic imagery in VR. In particular, we demonstrate that limiting the visual FOV of the zoomed in imagery to the central portion of the visual field, and modulating the transparency or zoom level of the imagery during rapid panning, reduce simulator sickness and help with targeting tasks.

@article{Chang:2017:PAZ,
   author = "Huiwen Chang and Michael Cohen",
   title = "Panning and Zooming High-Resolution Panoramas in Virtual Reality Devices",
   journal = "Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and
      Technology (UIST)",
   year = "2017",
   month = oct
}