Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
On the other hand, recently, an open web-based meme media environment called
Webble World was proposed [5] and its components are called webbles. If
Intelli-
gentBox
system is possible to integrate with Webble World, its usefulness would be-
come higher than ever. Fortunately, the same mechanism as that of
WebIB
seems
available for the integration. So, in this paper, we also discuss about the possibility of
the integration of
IntelligentBox
system with Webble World.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces related
work. In Section 3, we explain essential mechanisms of
IntelligentBox
and its
extended mechanisms for
WebIB
. Section 4 introduces several interactive web 3D
contents realized using
WebIB
. In Section 5, we discuss about the possibility of the
integration of
IntelligentBox
system with Webble World. Furthermore, in Section 6,
we discuss about development costs of web 3D contents, their performances and sig-
nificance of
IntelligentBox
system and
WebIB
as development environments for web
3D contents. Finally, we conclude the paper in Section 7.
2
Related Work
Our research purpose is to propose a software architecture that makes it easier to de-
velop 3D graphics applications including interactive web 3D contents. Its related
systems are 3D graphics toolkit systems and programming libraries like Open Inven-
tor [6], Coin3D [7] and 3D Widget [8]. Open Inventor is an OpenGL based object
oriented programming library. Coin3D is also library very similar to Open Inventor.
3D Widget is a Widget-based toolkit system for the 3D GUI development. Some of
them provide an authoring tool that enables to design 3D graphics contents. Even
using such authoring tools, it is not easy to develop 3D graphics applications because
developers have to write text-based programs for that. As for development tools for
interactive web 3D contents, there are library systems like Java3D [9], Jogl [10],
Papervision3D [11] and WebGL [12]. Java3D and Jogl is Java-based 3D graphics
library that works as a plug-in virtual machine running on a web browser for 3D
graphics contents. Papervision3D is Flash-based 3D graphics library that also enables
to develop web-based 3D graphics contents. WebGL (Web Graphics Library) is Java-
Script API for rendering interactive 3D graphics and 2D graphics within any compat-
ible web browser without the use of plug-ins. These are library systems so that the
user has to write text-based programs for developing web-based 3D graphics contents.
Our research system
IntelligentBox
and its web version (
WebIB
) provide various
3D software components called
boxes
represented as visible, manually operable, and
reusable functional objects. Furthermore, they provide a dynamic data linkage me-
chanism called slot connection. These features make it easier for even end-users to
develop 3D graphics applications including web 3D contents. This is the main differ-
ence of
IntelligentBox
and
WebIB
from others. We also have a plan to integrate
Intel-
ligentBox
system with Webble World using the same mechanism as that of
WebIB
.
This is new feature mainly shown in this paper.
