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AssigneeKoninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
InventorGraham G. Thomason
Estimating the term…
In a system for storing and displaying images, such as in a personal computer or mobile telephone, a display apparatus is provided which selectively displays virtual reflections of the real environment according to mirror values encoded with the stored image. A camera (302) provides real-time environmental image data which, under control of the CPU (100), are stored in memory (106, VRAM3). For transparency effects, background image data (RGB2) are mixed (110) with the foreground image (RGB1) under control of a transparency code (T). The resultant pixel values (RGB3) are further mixed with the environmental image data read out of VRAM3 which are left-right reversed (118) to simulate a true mirror image ) for output to the display device (300). The image from another camera (310) can be used in the same manner to provide a virtual transparency function. By controlling the transparency and reflection effects for each pixel of the image, various special effects and a more realistic display can be achieved.
A display apparatus comprising a display device and means for storing an image in the form of digital data, the digital image data being stored in a format defining colour values and additionally mirror values for different parts of the stored image, and means for controlling the display device so as to display reflections of the real environment selectively according to the mirror value at each part of the stored image.
A display apparatus comprising a display device and means for storing an image in the form of digital data, the digital image data being stored in a format defining colour values and additionally transparency values for different parts of the stored image, and means for controlling the display device so as to display portions of the real environment selectively according to the transparency value at each part of the stored image.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.