Equirectangular camera

How about an equirectangular camera node, would be pretty useful inthese VR headset days.
There is a fisheye, why not an equirectangular.
Currently put an equirectangular together from two fisheyes and shader code, but not ideal.

@pbourke, would this be covered by the feature request Render scenes to equirectangular panoramas and cube maps? (The proposed Make Spherical Camera node + “When a Spherical Camera is added to a scene, Render Scene to Image/Window behave differently…”)

Ahhh, didn’t see that.
Personally I don’t see the point in a node to create the cube maps, that is pretty trivial with just 6 suitably transformed existing perspective cameras.
I also don’t see the need to force 2:1 aspects, sure they are usual but not a requirement so no real need to change the behavour of the other render nodes.

In the meantime, here is my equirectangular camera solution.
Exposed so details can be adjusted.
Usual story, 6 perspective cameras arranged with cube faces as projection plane (this captures the scene) and a GLSL shader to construct the equirectangular.
I’m sure there are ways to make this simpler and faster, in particular the image->layer->imagegrid part.
Note: there is a window showing the cube maps, obviously one would normally turn this off.

vuo_equirectangular_camera.zip (11.3 MB)

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@pbourke, the reason for forcing 2:1 is that that is the official format aspect ratio.

Personally I don’t mind either way, as it can be changed to a degree afterwards. Also, equirectangular isn’t really the best format for storage of 360°. As you would be aware the poles become distorted, and have excessive resolution, with heavy antialiasing.