Elements of real-space imaging: a proposed taxonomy

Along with the marriage of motion pictures and computers has come an increasing interest in making images appear to have a greater degree of realness or presence, or `realspace imaging.'' Such topics as high-definition television, 3-D, fisheye lenses, surrogate travel, and `cyberspace'' reflect such interest. These topics are usually piled together and are unparsable, with the implicit assumptions that the more resolution, the more presence, and the more presence, the better. This paper proposes a taxonomy of the elements of real-space imaging. The taxonomy is organized around six sections: (1) monoscopic imaging, (2) stereoscopic imaging, (3) multiscopic imaging, (4) panoramics, (5) surrogate travel, and (6) real-time imaging.