Virtual reality cinema-immersive movie watching for headmounted displays

A method for providing immersive media content consumption experiences, comprising:

• rendering, to a viewer, one or more display images at one or more time points, the one or more display images being generated from one or more peripheral-vision expanded images received from a video streaming server, the one or more peripheral-vision expanded images being generated by the video streaming server from one or more source images in reference to one or more view directions of the viewer at the one or more time points;
• collecting, in real time, view direction data of the viewer collected while the viewer is viewing the one or more display images, the view direction data being used to determine a second view direction of the viewer at a second time point subsequent to the one or more time points;
• sending at least a part of the view direction data to the video streaming server to cause the video streaming server to generate a second peripheral-vision expanded image from a second source image in reference to the second view direction of the viewer at the second time point, the second peripheral-vision expanded image to be used to generate a second display image for rendering to the viewer at the second time point, the second peripheral-vision expanded image having a focal-vision image portion covering the second view direction of the viewer and a peripheral-vision image portion outside the focal-vision image portion, the focal-vision image portion of the second peripheral-vision expanded image being generated from a first corresponding source image portion in the second source image to cover the viewer's focal vision as covered by the first corresponding source image portion, the peripheral-vision image portion of the second peripheral-vision expanded image being generated by spatially stretching a second corresponding source image portion in the second source image to cover the viewer's peripheral vision including one or more peripheral vision portions not covered by the second corresponding source image portion of the second source image;
• receiving the second peripheral-vision expanded image from the video streaming server;
• generating the second display image from the second peripheral-vision expanded image;
• rendering at the second time point, to the viewer, the second display image.