Virtual heritage to go

Abstract

In this paper we show our conceptual approach of how easy it can be to develop web apps that provide real-time 3D support, behave like native apps and run platform independently on smartphones, tablets (e.g., iPad), and on desktop computers. This reduces development efforts while moving to a distributed application model. The concept is completely based on standard web technologies like HTML5, CSS3, DOM scripting, and Ajax. 3D rendering happens entirely on the client-side by utilizing X3DOM and WebGL respectively. In the context of virtual museums web apps can be used to give visitors and also experts such as curators the possibility to examine virtual heritage objects. By interacting with the 3D model more details can be explored, additional information in form of metadata and annotations can be obtained and also created, and finally the navigation to external resources is supported, too. It is also possible to inspect related objects of similar type, even if they are situated in locations that are far away

Distributed 3D model optimization for the web with the common implementation framework for online virtual museums

“…Some web applications generated with our proposed platform. From left to right: (1) standard viewer with fullscreen mode and functionality for toggling point rendering and switching navigation types; (2) viewer that provides feature enhancement via an X3DOM-based implementation of the Radiance Scaling algorithm described in [32]; (3) metadata viewer -same 3d-scanned Cultural Heritage object, but other viewer template based on the ideas presented in [3]; and (4) application from the CAD/engineering domain with tree view for showing the original graph structure of the engine model.…”

“…Three-dimensional graphics allow for applications to present and configure products more realistically, enable web based simulations, or display of archaeological artifacts [2]. Interactively exploring Cultural Heritage (CH) objects through a Virtual Museum based on HTML5 technologies like WebGL, JavaScript and CSS is possible today, even on mobile devices [3], [4]. However, to display three-dimensional cultural heritage models in a web browser, the scanned raw models need to be optimized, transcoded, and embedded in an HTML document or browser application, through a dynamic, but usually manually performed, multi-step process similar to the one outlined in Figure 1.…”