An Efficient Object-Oriented Authoring and Presentation System for Virtual Environments

Overview

This paper describes the design and implementation of a multi-purpose object-oriented authoring system for interactive virtual environments and presentations, semi-interactive 3D visualization, and non-interactive photorealistic animations. Its main design criteria are reusability and flexibility, especially in the support of a wide range of input and output formats. Input data may be provided from any type of event-oriented simulation system as well as from an interactive scene modeling tool. The primary output system is a Java-based VRML browser, but a concept of output driver channels allows the use of other rendering systems, such as off-line renderers for the production of photo-realistic video streams.