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Immersive and interactive virtual reality applications based on 3D web browsers

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Abstract

This study explores the possibility of effectively using web-standard technologies (i.e., HTML5, JavaScript, WebGL, and WebRTC) to deploy full immersive and interactive virtual reality applications. These applications are based on computer clusters and run in multi-projection environments, such as CAVEs, Panoramas and Power Walls. Until recently, these applications were build using tailored solutions, such low-level libraries to distribute data. We discuss the modern-day web technology which allows these applications meet a multi-platform requirement. This paper also evaluates the communication and synchronization requirements of these applications that are traditionally the main bottleneck. As a proof-of-concept to show the feasibility of our study, we devised and implemented an immersive and interactive virtual reality application employing only web technologies. Our proof-of-concept runs on a miniCAVE environment with three displays and a 6-node cluster.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP)/Open University of Brazil (UAB), São Paulo, Brazil

    Marcelo de Paiva Guimarães

  2. Faculty Campo Limpo Paulista (Faccamp), Campo Limpo Paulista, São Paulo, Brazil

    Marcelo de Paiva Guimarães, José Hamilton Mota & Vinícius Humberto Serapilha Durelli

  3. Federal University of São João del-Rei (UFSJ), São João del-Rei, Brazil

    Diego Roberto Colombo Dias

  4. Corollarium Technologies, Itapecerica da Serra, São Paulo, Brazil

    Bruno Barberi Gnecco

  5. University of Sao Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil

    Vinícius Humberto Serapilha Durelli

  6. Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil

    Luis Carlos Trevelin

Authors
  1. Marcelo de Paiva Guimarães
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  2. Diego Roberto Colombo Dias
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  3. José Hamilton Mota
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  4. Bruno Barberi Gnecco
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  5. Vinícius Humberto Serapilha Durelli
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  6. Luis Carlos Trevelin
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Correspondence to Marcelo de Paiva Guimarães.

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de Paiva Guimarães, M., Dias, D.R.C., Mota, J.H. et al. Immersive and interactive virtual reality applications based on 3D web browsers. Multimed Tools Appl 77, 347–361 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-4256-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-4256-7

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