Methods and systems for representing a scene by combining perspective and orthographic projections

A method comprising:

• managing, by a virtual reality content generation system, state data for a virtual reality scene that is based on a real-world scene, the state data representative of a state of a real-time volumetric representation of the real-world scene as the state changes in real time;
• generating, by the virtual reality content generation system based on the state data, a scene representation of the virtual reality scene, the scene representation including a set of surface data frame sequences each depicting a different projection of the virtual reality scene from a different vantage point, the different projections including
• a plurality of orthographic projections generated based on a plurality of orthographic vantage points positioned at virtual locations defining a boundary of a cubic core portion of the virtual reality scene, the plurality of orthographic vantage points including pairs of orthographic vantage points each including orthographic vantage points directed inwardly toward the cubic core portion and toward one another along a different orthogonal spatial dimension, and
• a plurality of perspective projections generated based on a plurality of perspective vantage points directed outwardly away from the cubic core portion and toward a peripheral portion of the virtual reality scene, the plurality of perspective vantage points each positioned on a face of the boundary of the cubic core portion of the virtual reality scene such that each of the plurality of perspective projections depict a frustum-shaped volume and the plurality of perspective projections together depict an overall volume forming a hollow cube that includes a cavity within which the cubic core portion is located;
• and
• providing, by the virtual reality content generation system to a media player device by way of a network, the scene representation of the virtual reality scene.

A system comprising:

• at least one physical computing device that
• manages state data for a virtual reality scene, the state data representative of a state of a volumetric representation of the virtual reality scene as the state changes over time;
• generates, based on the state data, a scene representation of the virtual reality scene, the scene representation including a set of surface data frame sequences each depicting a different projection of the virtual reality scene from a different vantage point, the different projections including
• a plurality of orthographic projections generated based on a plurality of orthographic vantage points, the plurality of orthographic projections representative of a core portion of the virtual reality scene and including pairs of orthographic projections based on respective pairs of orthographic vantage points positioned at virtual locations defining a boundary of the core portion of the virtual reality scene, the orthographic vantage points included within each pair of orthographic vantage points directed inwardly toward one another and toward the core portion of the virtual reality scene, and
• a plurality of perspective projections generated based on a plurality of perspective vantage points, the plurality of perspective projections representative of a peripheral portion of the virtual reality scene external to the core portion;
• and
• provides the scene representation of the virtual reality scene to a media player device by way of a network.