Today, scientists and engineers are exploring advanced applications and uses of immersive systems that can be cost-effectively applied in their fields. However, one of the impediments to the widespread use of these technologies is the extensive technical expertise required of application developers. A software environment that provides abstractions from specific details of hardware configurations and low-level software tools is needed to provide a common base for the prototyping, development, testing and debugging of applications. This paper describes VR Juggler, a virtual platform for the creation and execution of immersive applications, that provides a virtual reality system-independent operating environment. We focus on the approach taken to specify, design and implement VR Juggler and the benefits derived from our approach.

https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=18706&context=rtd

VR Juggler: a virtual platform for virtual reality application development

Web technologies provide the basis to distribute digital information worldwide and in realtime but they have also established the Web as a ubiquitous application platform. The Web evolved from simple text data to include advanced layout, images, audio, and recently streaming video. Today, as our digital environment becomes increasingly three-dimensional (e.g. 3D cinema, 3D video, consumer 3D displays, and high-performance 3D processing even in mobile devices) it becomes obvious that we must extend the core Web technologies to support interactive 3D content.
 Instead of adapting existing graphics technologies to the Web, XML3D uses a more radical approach: We take today's Web technology and try to find the minimum set of additions that fully support interactive 3D content as an integral part of mixed 2D/3D Web documents.
 XML3D enables portable cross-platform authoring, distribution, and rendering of and interaction with 3D data. As a declarative approach XML3D fully leverages existing web technologies including HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the Document Object Model (DOM), and AJAX for dynamic content. All 3D content is exposed in the DOM, fully supporting DOM scripting and events, thus allowing Web designers to easily apply their existing skills. The design of XML3D is based on modern programmable graphics hardware, e.g. supports efficient mapping to GPUs without maintaining copies. It also leverages a new approach to specify shaders independently of specific rendering techniques or graphics APIs. We demonstrated the feasibility of our approach by integrating XML3D support into two major open browser frameworks from Mozilla and WebKit as well as providing a portable implementation based on JavaScript and WebGL.

/pdf/xml3d-interactive-3d-graphics-for-the-web-1gfcq9cao4.pdf

XML3D - Interactive 3D Graphics for the Web.

Virtual reality applications are making valuable contributions to the field of product realization. This paper presents an assessment of the hardware and software capabilities of VR technology needed to support a meaningful integration of VR applications in the product life cycle analysis. Several examples of VR applications for the various stages of the product life cycle engineering are presented as case studies. These case studies describe research results, fielded systems, technical issues, and implementation issues in the areas of virtual design, virtual manufacturing, virtual assembly, engineering analysis, visualization of analysis results, and collaborative virtual environments. Current issues and problems related to the creation, use, and implementation of virtual environments for engineering design, analysis, and manufacturing are also discussed. @DOI: 10.1115/1.1353846#

https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=me_pubs

Assessment of VR technology and its applications to engineering problems

Towards user centred design (UCD) in architecture based on immersive virtual environments

This paper presents a new software architecture for 3D mixed reality applications, named Tinmith-evo5. Currently there are a limited number of existing toolkits for the development of 3D mixed reality applications, each optimized for particular feature but at the detriment of others. Complex interactive user interfaces and applications require extensive supporting infrastructure, and can be hampered by inadequate support. The Tinmith-evo5 architecture is optimised to develop mobile augmented reality and other interactive 3D applications on portable platforms with limited resources. This architecture is implemented in C++ with an object-oriented data flow design, an object store based on the Unix file system model, and uses other ideas from existing previous work.

/pdf/an-object-oriented-software-architecture-for-3d-mixed-u0r94b7lhj.pdf

An object-oriented software architecture for 3D mixed reality applications

A highly flexible virtual reality system

High interactivity in real-time environments requires new system design concepts for virtual reality environments. We will define our understanding of a modern system and describe the prototypical system Lightning, which addresses some of these new features.

/pdf/a-flexible-prototyping-tool-for-3d-real-time-user-41qvgvy34z.pdf

A Flexible Prototyping Tool for 3D Real-Time User-Interaction

Virtual reality (VR) systems utilize more and more output media in order to make virtual environments more realistic. Furthermore, VR developers nowadays concentrate on rich interaction and animation. This causes the need for a new VR development system architecture. Such a new architecture is proposed and discussed. Its key features include support for new output media, device independence, and rapid behavioral prototyping. The Lightning VR system is introduced as a prototype for the presented architecture. It has already shown its usefulness in several industrial applications.

Angela Rösch

Papers

A highly flexible virtual reality system

A Flexible Prototyping Tool for 3D Real-Time User-Interaction

Toward next generation virtual reality systems