Authors:
George Anastassakis
and
Themis Panayiotopoulos
Affiliation:
University of Piraeus, Greece
Keyword(s):
X3D, Virtual Environment.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Environments
;
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Interactive Environments
;
Virtual Reality Tools and Languages (X3D, VRML, Java3D, OpenGL, ...)
Abstract:
X3D is an open, royalty-free, scene-graph-based standard for 3D virtual worlds that has been used by virtual environment developers many times until today. As a virtual environment development tool, it has numerous appealing features; however, it also has certain characteristics that may, under certain circumstances, create significant problems to developers. With a motivation to communicate our own experience to, and contribute to the efforts of, other researchers who are using or consider using it, we evaluate X3D in a virtual environment developer's perspective and identify potential problems with its usage. Also, we present an architectural pattern aimed at addressing those problems effectively, with a focus on transparency, standards-compliance, reusability and extendibility. In conclusion, we present a case study of the application of the proposed pattern in a fully-implemented intelligent virtual environment system.