AN ARCHITECTURAL PATTERN FOR X3D-BASED VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS - An Object-oriented Approach

George Anastassakis, Themis Panayiotopoulos

2012

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.

References

  1. Anastassakis, G., Panayiotopoulos, T., 2011. Intelligent Virtual Environment Development with the REVE Platform: An Overview. In Vilhjalmsson, H. H., Kopp, S., Marsella, S. and Thorisson, K. R. (Eds.), Intelligent Virtual Agents, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 6895 (pp. 431-432). Springer.
  2. Aylett, R., Luck, M., 1999. Applying Artificial Intelligence to Virtual Reality: Intelligent Virtual Environments. Applied Artificial Intelligence 14(1), 3-32.
  3. Behr, J., Dähne, P., Roth, M., 2004. Utilizing X3D for immersive environments. In Web3D 7804: Proceedings of the ninth international conference on 3D Web technology (pp. 71-78). ACM.
  4. Bouras, C., Panagopoulos, A., Tsiatsos, T., 2005. Advances in X3D multi-user virtual environments. In Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (ISM'05) (pp. 136-142).
  5. Bouras, C., Tegos, C., Triglianos, V., Tsiatsos, T., 2007. X3D Multi-user Virtual Environment Platform for Collaborative Spatial Design. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops (ICDCSW 7807).
  6. Cabral, M., Zuffo, M., Ghirotti, S., Belloc, O., Nomura, L., Nagamura, M., Andrade, F., Faria, R., Ferraz, L., 2007. An experience using X3D for virtual cultural heritage. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on 3D Web Technology (Web3D 7807) (pp. 161-164). ACM.
  7. Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R. and Vlissides, J., 1995. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable ObjectOriented Software. Addison-Wesley.
  8. Ibanez-Martinez, J., Delgado-Mata, C., 2006. A Basic Semantic Common Level for Virtual Environments. International Journal of Virtual Reality, 5(3) 25-32.
  9. Ieronutti, L., Chittaro, L., 2007. Employing virtual humans for education and training in X3D/VRML worlds. Computers & Education, 49(1), 93-109.
  10. Ong, S., Mannan, M., 2004. Virtual reality simulations and animations in a web-based interactive manufacturing engineering module. Computers & Education, 43(4), 361-382.
  11. REVEnet, 2011. REVEnet. http://kelnet.cs.unipi.gr/reve.
  12. Web3D Consortium, 2011. X3D and related Specifications. http://www.web3d.org/x3d/specifications/
  13. Xj3D, 2011. The Xj3D project. http:// http://www.xj3d.org.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Anastassakis G. and Panayiotopoulos T. (2012). AN ARCHITECTURAL PATTERN FOR X3D-BASED VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS - An Object-oriented Approach . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications and International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP, (VISIGRAPP 2012) ISBN 978-989-8565-02-0, pages 466-471. DOI: 10.5220/0003863404660471


in Bibtex Style

@conference{grapp12,
author={George Anastassakis and Themis Panayiotopoulos},
title={AN ARCHITECTURAL PATTERN FOR X3D-BASED VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS - An Object-oriented Approach},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications and International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP, (VISIGRAPP 2012)},
year={2012},
pages={466-471},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0003863404660471},
isbn={978-989-8565-02-0},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications and International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP, (VISIGRAPP 2012)
TI - AN ARCHITECTURAL PATTERN FOR X3D-BASED VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS - An Object-oriented Approach
SN - 978-989-8565-02-0
AU - Anastassakis G.
AU - Panayiotopoulos T.
PY - 2012
SP - 466
EP - 471
DO - 10.5220/0003863404660471