Bogdan Wiszniewski, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics, Gdansk University of Technology
Clear, comprehensive, and educational!
This book is a very informative, yet remarkably easy to follow and understand. There is a lot of information packed in, but Authors manage to avoid getting bogged down in a heavy academic tone. Although written by several authors, consistency of the book content is kept well. Authors follow two complementary tracks through the domain of interactive 3D multimedia content technologies: 3D content creation and management, and 3D search and presentation.
The content creation and management track moves the book reader far ahead of the classic 3D content standards and methods, capable so far of describing only fixed virtual scenes, by introducing new models, paradigms and methods for dynamic composition of virtual scenes, dynamic content modeling, database modeling of virtual worlds, and building interactive, configurable and multiuser 3D VR/AR environments. Similarly, the search and presentation track introduces a new model of interactive object interactions, a method for accessing the distance between different concepts in a semantic, spatiotemporal dataset, and an innovative approach to 3D visualization of mass Web search results. All through the book new concepts are well illustrated with notations and languages developed by the Authors.
I could see various uses for this book: from reference guide, through required graduate course reading up to inspiring survey of ideas for researchers.
Marek R. Ogiela, AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland
Attractive, interesting and educational
What makes this book unique on the international scale is its ability to describe the most recent achievements in advanced multimedia technologies, and in particular the creation of 3D content using known and new standards, algorithms for managing 3D presentation content as well as innovative methods of presenting, describing and searching in 3D content.
It has been written by authors who are recognised scientific authorities and have significantly contributed to global IT research. Apart from its high scientific quality, the book is very structured and presents a number of interesting subjects related to interactive multimedia technologies in a way that is clear and understandable to the reader.
This monograph represents a collection of the most valuable scientific achievements of recent years, which are very well aligned with the current development trends of modern information technology, namely the search for effective solutions to create, present, securely and efficiently manage 3D visual information in virtual and augmented reality systems. It can form an invaluable source of information for both computer science professionals and students or people not active in this field, but interested in its topics.
I wholeheartedly recommend reading this book!
Introduction.- Interactive 3D Content Standards.- Issues in Creation, Management, Search and Presentation of Interactive 3D Content.- Dynamic Database Modeling of 3D Multimedia Content.- Building Configurable 3D Web Applications with Flex-VR.- Modeling Interactive Augmented Reality Environments.- Secure User-Contributed 3D Virtual Environments.- Describing Interactivity of 3D Content.- Searching Content Related by Semantics, Space and Time.- Interactive 3D Visualization of Search Results.- Index.
The widespread use of interactive 3D multimedia technologies, including virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), has been recently enabled by significant progress in computing hardware performance, increasing availability of versatile input-output devices, as well as rapid growth in the available network bandwidth. Remote access to 3D/VR/AR content, enabled by development of 3D content representation standards, allows users to experience distant virtual worlds in the same way as they can experience local 3D/VR/AR applications.
The popularity of 3D computer games, 3D on-line communities, and 3D movies based on computer graphics shows that users are also well prepared for the shift from 2D to 3D user interfaces. Thus, these new interactive 3D multimedia technologies could become common also in other application domains, such as cultural heritage, education, training, tourism, and e-commerce. The application of 3D technologies can advance these domains by providing enhanced user experiences.
However, the potential of 3D/VR/AR technologies in everyday applications can be fully exploited only if accompanied by the development of efficient and easy-to-use methods of creation, management, search, and presentation of interactive 3D multimedia content, which could be used by both expert and non-expert users.
Presenting the results of research in the domain of interactive 3D multimedia content technologies, this book focuses on two broad areas: 3D content creation and management, and 3D search and presentation. In the area of 3D content creation and management, issues related to dynamic database modelling of interactive 3D content, creation of 3D/VR and AR content by both expert and non-expert users, as well as secure collaborative creation of 3D content are covered. In the field of 3D search and presentation, issues related to describing 3D content interactivity, searching content related by semantics, space and time, and 3D interactive visualization of search results are also covered in this comprehensive book.