Appeal No. 1999-0296 Page 2
Application No. 08/483,552
of the displacement between corresponding points of an image
presented to a viewer’s left eye vis-á-vis points on an image
presented to his right eye. At some point, the disparity
becomes so great that the viewer is incapable of recognizing
depth and fusing the two images into a single 3-D view.
The appellants seek to overcome these problems by
allowing a viewer to adjust the disparity between
corresponding points on right and left image planes. When
zooming in on an object with a stereo camera pair, the shift
in focal length accompanying the zoom is accompanied by a
simultaneous shift in disparity so that the stereo effect is
not lost when a target object is very close, a moderate
distance, or very far from the cameras. Camera separation is
changed as a function of target distance to maintain a fixed
fraction of the target distance as a default.
Claim 5, which is representative for our purposes,
follows:
5. A method of maintaining disparity of a
stereo pair of images within a range which avoids a
loss of stereo effect without camera toe in while
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