An Internet based virtual exhibition system: Conceptual design and infrastructure

Abstract

Virtual reality technology has wide applications in manufacturing, service industry, and medical training. In addition to essential presence, virtual reality provides secure and economical environment for participants to experience the virtual world rather than the corresponding real world. With advent of rapidly developed technology, there are numerous new products and projects to be introduced in exhibition shows over the world everyday and it is neither prudent nor possible to attend all of them. There have been overwhelming amount of virtual exhibitions available on the Internet; however, most of them are not satisfactory in terms of performance and users cannot get a full understanding on the product interested due to low sense of presence. Information coordination, other than information share and distribution, between the participants is crucial but not yet well defined in the current virtual exhibitions. It is prominent to develop Internet based virtual reality exhibition systems that agglomerate the advantages of efficiency/accessibility on the Internet and high sense of presence in virtual environment. The Internet based virtual exhibition systems are not only as informative as traditional exhibitions but also more flexible to relax temporal and spatial constraints to allow users attend exhibitions anytime and anywhere. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.