Use of the Frame Synchronization Technique to Improve the Visualization Realism on the Web

Abstract

Along with the popularity of the World Wide Web (WWW), merging the virtual reality technique into the WWW environment is a popular area of research in recent years. The emerging of the VRML standard is the result of such effort. The panoramic image viewer is another achievement of this type of research. However, these two types of browsers have their own merits and faults, and these differences are revealed in the discrepancy of their respective user interfaces. This chapter presents a frame synchronization technique so that the display on the VRML browser can harmonize with the picture of the panoramic image viewer. This chapter first presents an in-depth full comparison of these two browsers, and then draws out the issues that are essential to synchronize the frame displays on these two browsers. The equations and mechanisms to enable such synchronization then follow. Finally, the frame synchronization mechanism that was implemented with experiments to demonstrate its effectiveness is also given. The frame synchronization mechanism provides a simple yet effective method to increase visualization realism inside the virtual world without sacrificing the freedom of navigation.