A Java/CGI approach to developing a geographic virtual reality toolkit on the internet

Abstract

A Java/common gateway interface (CGI) approach is employed to design a toolkit for interactively building up virtual environments from existing geographical information system (GIS) databases. This approach takes advantage of both the Java and CGI approaches, providing a flexible and user friendly interface, while making better use of the power of the server. It is also beneficial to the balancing of workloads on both client and server sides. A prototype, called GeoVR, has been implemented by extending ArcView Internet Map Server on its client side by the Java language and correspondingly, on its server-side by the Avenue language. The GeoVR server is responsible for generating 3D scenes in terms of parameter values sent from the Java client. The 3D scenes are then transformed to VRML models, and delivered to the WWW browser for display and navigation. This toolkit, allowing users to interact with 2D GIS data on the Internet and create perspective views from these data on the fly, illustrates how to extend an existing Internet GIS into a more powerful virtual GIS. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.