Methods and systems for preserving precision in compressed depth data representative of a scene

Abstract

An exemplary data precision preservation system accesses a depth representation of a virtual reality scene associated with a world coordinate space, divides the representation into sections associated with different clip coordinate spaces, and determines a lowest and a highest non-null depth value represented in a particular section. Based on these values, the system determines an inverse view-projection transform for transforming depth values from a clip coordinate space of the particular section to the world coordinate space. The system converts original depth values represented in the particular section to compressed depth values that are normalized so as to be represented using fewer data bits the original depth values. The system provides, to a media player device by way of a network, a virtual reality dataset representative of the virtual reality scene and including the compressed depth values and the inverse view-projection transform. Corresponding systems and methods are also disclosed.