The seamless integration of Web3D technologies with university curricula to engage the changing student cohort

The increasing tendency of many university students to study at least some courses at a distance limits their opportunities for the interactions fundamental to learning. Online learning can assist but relies heavily on text, which is limiting for some students. The popularity of computer games, especially among the younger students, and the emergence of networked games and game-like virtual worlds offers opportunities for enhanced interaction in educational applications. For virtual worlds to be widely adopted in higher education it is desirable to have approaches to design and development that are responsive to needs and limited in their resource requirements. Ideally it should be possible for academics without technical expertise to adapt virtual worlds to support their teaching needs. This project identified Web3D, a technology that is based on the X3D standards and which presents 3D virtual worlds within common web browsers, as an approach worth exploring for educational application. The broad goals of the project were to produce exemplars of Web3D for educational use, together with development tools and associated resources to support non-technical academic adopters, and to promote an Australian community of practice to support broader adoption of Web3D in education. During the first year of the project exemplar applications were developed and tested. The Web3D technology was found to be still in a relatively early stage of development in which the application of standards did not ensure reliable operation in different environments. Moreover, ab initio development of virtual worlds and associated tools proved to be more demanding of resources than anticipated and was judged unlikely in the near future to result in systems that non-technical academics could use with confidence. In the second year the emphasis moved to assisting academics to plan and implement teaching in existing virtual worlds that provided relatively easy to use tools for customizing an environment. A project officer worked with participating academics to support the teaching of significant elements of courses within Second LifeTM. This approach was more successful in producing examples of good practice that could be shared with and emulated by other academics. Trials were also conducted with ExitRealityTM, a new Australian technology that presents virtual worlds in a web browser. Critical factors in the success of the project included providing secure access to networked computers with the necessary capability; negotiating the complexity of working across education, design of virtual worlds, and technical requirements; and supporting participants with professional development in the technology and appropriate pedagogy for the new environments. Major challenges encountered included working with experimental technologies that are evolving rapidly and deploying new networked applications on secure university networks. The project has prepared the way for future expansion in the use of virtual worlds for teaching at USQ and has contributed to the emergence of a national network of tertiary educators interested in the educational applications of virtual worlds

The Layered Virtual Reality Commerce System (LaVRCS): An Approach to Creating Viable VRCommerce Sites

In this paper, the authors argue that Virtual Reality (VR) does have a place in an e-commerce environment. However, VR is not yet ready to supplant standard e-commerce Web interfaces with a completely immersive VR environment. Rather, Virtual Reality in e-commerce (VRCommerce) must rely on a mixed platform presentation to account for various levels of usability, user trust, and technical feasibility. The authors propose that e-commerce sites that want to implement VRCommerce offer at least three layers of interaction to users: a standard Web interface, embedded VR objects in a Web interface, and semi-immersive VR within an existing Web interface. This system is termed the Layered Virtual Reality Commerce System, or LaVRCS

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE DATA SHARING AND VISUALISATION: WEB-BASED APPROACHES

Both product design and manufacturing are intrinsically collaborative processes. From conception and design to project completion and ongoing maintenance, all points in the lifecycle of any product involve the work of fluctuating teams of designers, suppliers and customers. That is why companies are involved in the creation of a distributed design and a manufacturing environment which could provide an effective way to communicate and share information throughout the entire enterprise and the supply chain. At present, the technologies that support such a strategy are based on World Wide Web platforms and follow two different paths. The first one focuses on 2D documentation improvement and introduces 3D interactive information in order to add knowledge to drawings. The second one works directly on 3D models and tries to extend the life of 3D data moving these design information downstream through the entire product lifecycle. Unfortunately the actual lack of a unique 3D Web-based standard has stimulated the growing up of many different proprietary and open source standards and, as a consequence, a production of an incompatible information exchange over the WEB. This paper proposes a structured analysis of Web-based solutions, trying to identify the most critical aspects to promote a unique 3D digital standard model capable of sharing product and manufacturing data more effectively—regardless of geographic boundaries, data structures, processes or computing environmen

Extending Interactive Electronic Maintenance Manual with Web3D Technologies

Rapid developments in Information and Communication Technology have revealed a number of opportunities for supporting a complete product life cycle of the mechanical facilities particularly for maintenance purposes. The complexity of mechanical procedures as well as their perceptions has challenged engineers to create more effective and interactive maintenance manual. Therefore, this paper proposes an advanced electronic maintenance manual with the interactive 3D visualization by using the latest Web3D technologies. The advantage of this method is the visual and three dimensional explanations delivered in the maintenance manuals. This method will extend the traditional work instructions into an interactive electronic maintenance manual. The manual module which involves Cortona3D software is processed by preparation of 3D CAD data format from mechanical facilities. Then this process continues with the addition 3D animation with related texts through the maintenance operations, and converting the modified 3D data into VRML format which enables accessible through Web. The result is an interactive and on-demand electronic maintenance manual which allows users to communicate maintenance problems. The assessment concludes that the 3D maintenance manual will improve an intuitive interface and information retention, encourage visual knowledge and minimize ambiguity

External interaction management of VRML scenes for e-learning applications

This is an electronic version of the paper presenten at the International conference on International Workshop on Web3D Technologies in Learning, Education and Training (LET-Web3D 2004) held in Udine (Italy) on 2004This paper describes an innovative approach to solve some of the problems that arise when integrating virtual reality capabilities into e-learning environments. The VRML representation of a scene includes, along with its geometric description, a full specification of the student-scene interaction logic. This representation is rendered by a browser, which also orchestrates the interaction according to the logic. Such a mechanism implies reprogramming and/or replicating partly the logic when modifying the interaction scheme of a single scene for different students. It also prevents any external access to student’s actions or scene reactions, which is necessary for on-line evaluation or instruction. We propose to expand the standard interaction mechanism of VRML so that both the specification of the scene logic and the interaction flow are managed by an external and centralized entity following a clientserver approach, hence solving the identified problems, while additionally increasing design efficiency and content protection.This work has been partly supported by the Plan Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología of the Spanish Government under project TIC2001-306

Application-driven visual computing towards industry 4.0 2018

245 p.La Tesis recoge contribuciones en tres campos: 1. Agentes Virtuales Interactivos: autónomos, modulares, escalables, ubicuos y atractivos para el usuario. Estos IVA pueden interactuar con los usuarios de manera natural.2. Entornos de RV/RA Inmersivos: RV en la planificación de la producción, el diseño de producto, la simulación de procesos, pruebas y verificación. El Operario Virtual muestra cómo la RV y los Co-bots pueden trabajar en un entorno seguro. En el Operario Aumentado la RA muestra información relevante al trabajador de una manera no intrusiva. 3. Gestión Interactiva de Modelos 3D: gestión online y visualización de modelos CAD multimedia, mediante conversión automática de modelos CAD a la Web. La tecnología Web3D permite la visualización e interacción de estos modelos en dispositivos móviles de baja potencia.Además, estas contribuciones han permitido analizar los desafíos presentados por Industry 4.0. La tesis ha contribuido a proporcionar una prueba de concepto para algunos de esos desafíos: en factores humanos, simulación, visualización e integración de modelos

Share - Publish - Store - Preserve. Methodologies, Tools and Challenges for 3D Use in Social Sciences and Humanities

Through this White Paper, which gathers contributions from experts of 3D data as well as professionals concerned with the interoperability and sustainability of 3D research data, the PARTHENOS project aims at highlighting some of the current issues they have to face, with possible specific points according to the discipline, and potential practices and methodologies to deal with these issues. During the workshop, several tools to deal with these issues have been introduced and confronted with the participants experiences, this White Paper now intends to go further by also integrating participants feedbacks and suggestions of potential improvements. Therefore, even if the focus is put on specific tools, the main goal is to contribute to the development of standardized good practices related to the sharing, publication, storage and long-term preservation of 3D data