Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Discussion
6.1
Development Costs
For preparing the example models of Figure 5, 6 and 7, it was not necessary to write
any text-based program. They were constructed only through direct manipulations on
a computer screen using a mouse device. Therefore, even teachers who do not have
any programming knowledge can construct web 3D contents including 3D education-
al contents by using
WebIB
.
6.2
Performances
The most important factor should be considered as for the performance of
WebIB
is update rate (refresh rate or frames per second) of off-screen rendering images
on a web-browser transferred from a web-server. This value depends on a network
environment. However, there is no problem because the system employs JPEG com-
pression and can appropriately reduce the network bandwidth required to transfer an
off-screen rendering image.
6.3
Significance
There are many services on the web. However, there are very few services of 3D
graphics contents on the web. One of its reasons is that currently most web-browsers
natively do not support the 3D graphics rendering. If we want to receive 3D graphics
content services on the web, we have to install any plug-in software like Java3D, Jogl
[11], etc. This is inconvenient especially for end-users who are not accustomed to
doing so. Even if this is not inconvenient, there is another reason that 3D graphics
contents need 3D polygonal model data but they are usually not allowed to be distri-
buted through the Internet due to their user-licenses. Even if the distribution of 3D
polygonal model data is allowed, there is a problem that the transmission time of them
become very long. On the other hand, our web version of
IntelligentBox
works as a
SaaS application does not have the above problems because only off-screen rendering
images of 3D scenes are transferred from a web-server to a client web-browser as
explained in Sec. 3. So, interactive 3D contents already developed as applications of
IntelligentBox
can be reused as web 3D contents those work as SaaS applications. Its
MashUp with other SaaS applications are also possible. As a result, the usefulness of
IntelligentBox
has become higher than ever. The integration of
IntelligentBox
with
Webble World mainly proposed as new feature in this paper is also regarded as one of
such MashUp examples.
7
Conclusion
This paper introduced software architecture that makes it easier to develop 3D graphics
applications including interactive web 3D contents. Our research system
IntelligentBox
provides various software components each of which corresponds to each of required
