Whole Sky Imager Simulator

[leronjulian]

Is there a function implemented to simulate an image as if viewed from a whole sky imager (fisheye lens)? or should the FOV of the perspective camera just be changed to 180 degrees?

[JRLoveridge]

For any real camera, I suggest using a realistic camera model including distortions. For a purely synthetic case, there are a couple of ways you could model a fish eye type camera with varying accuracy. This paper has some details

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924271605000146

I'm not an expert on cameras but the equidistant or equip-solid angle models in those papers are, I think, more appropriate than the perspective model. I think for a high degree of realism, fish eye lens tend to have distortions from those models as well, but those should be fine for idealized simulations. Perspective projection will not be accurate for pixels near the edge of the image.

If you decide to add the new model it probably just requires modification to a couple of the equations in the perspective_projection function in sensor.py without having to modify most of the "boiler-plate" code.

https://github.com/CloudTomography/pyshdom/blob/1ed9efbe03e93edf3acfc6f5f07d34f8dfec1550/pyshdom/sensor.py#L466-L467

[leronjulian]

Thanks!