-
Morevna Mansion on the official Vega Virtual Device. Rotation only. Morevna Project, CC BY-SA 4.0; full credits below.
-
Held frame 37 with source comparison and provenance controls. Morevna Project, CC BY-SA 4.0; full adaptation credits below.
Inspiration
A film can make someone want to look a little beyond the camera’s frame. That wish becomes more interesting when the viewer can inspect where the extra view came from. Phantom Window explores a held film moment while keeping the source footage, attributed production art, and unsupported areas visible as distinct kinds of evidence.
What it does
The current Mansion experience holds one Morevna film frame and lets the viewer rotate a virtual view around that moment. Center returns to the source direction, and a wipe compares the view with the exact original frame. A provenance overlay and point inspector explain whether a location comes from source footage, separately attributed production art, or unsupported fill. Other video-capable rolls remain available in the catalog, but this Mansion demonstration is a frozen moment with rotation only.
How we built it
The new bake registers neighboring frames into the held source image using measured planar homographies, then combines supported footage and attributed production art on one panorama surface. The browser and bake use the same camera projection, which removes the earlier duplicate room and hard source rectangle. WebGL renders the view, and CPU and GPU classifiers are compared at sampled points. Mixed boundaries remain conservatively labeled as reference art. The exact source JPEG is identified by its recorded hash.
Challenges we ran into
An animated plate pan cannot be treated as a physically rotating camera without distorting the scene. The correction holds a single moment, removes depth from this panorama mode, and limits interaction to rotation. A wider sphere also exposes a large amount that the film never observed: about 91.76 percent is unsupported color extension. The inspector keeps that limit available even when clean-view mode hides the violet marking.
Accomplishments
The private composition passed 199 automated Node.js tests, a launched HTTP smoke check, source and asset checks, and a deterministic rebuild. Actual browser receiving verified arrow-key rotation, Center, the exact source wipe, provenance toggling, and point inspection of footage, production art, and unsupported regions. The held frame stayed fixed during those controls. A narrow layout was received without horizontal overflow, and an original video roll could still play through the catalog. The final official Vega Virtual Device demo also shows the held Mansion moment, rotation, Center, exact source comparison and evidence inspection. Native D-pad and touch inputs are recorded separately from labelled simulated-assistant host controls. Physical Fire TV testing remains pending.
What we learned
A modest, precisely described interaction is more useful than a broad reconstruction claim that the source cannot support. Sharing one projection and one held source identity makes comparisons easier to interpret. Source footage and production art can both contribute to exploration while retaining their different provenance.
What's next
We want to test more permitted moments, improve coverage without hiding unsupported regions, and test the selected build on physical Fire TV devices. Physical camera translation and moving-source novel-view synthesis remain future work. Wider exploration will need additional observed footage or clearly attributed reference material.
Source credits
The Mansion demonstration uses footage and production background art from Morevna Episode 3 by the Morevna Project. The media and derived panorama assets are attributed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The original episode and project credits identify the source creators and production materials.
The composition uses the 207.5–213.5 second source window, holds the anchor at 210.5 seconds, registers neighboring frames and includes separately attributed production background art. Application provenance overlays distinguish observed footage, reference art and unsupported color extension. The recorded demo adds framing, editorial holds and narration. Application code retains its MIT license, while dependency and media notices remain with their respective files.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.