Detecting inconsistencies in the design of virtual environments over the web using domain specific rules

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, 3D Virtual Environments (VEs) are being used over the web for various purposes such as education, collaborative working or social networking. Unfortunately, the development process of such environments remains a demanding task, often accessible only to VE experts despite the availability of a number of Virtual Reality (VR) authoring tools. On the other hand, VE experts are seldom domain experts. This implies that their knowledge on specific domains can most of the time be limited. This could lead to design errors or, as in most cases, longer development times and efforts as the development process become an iterative one involving many revisions. One way of accelerating this process is by making it possible to capture a specific knowledge of a domain and later use this knowledge to automatically check that the design of the VE meets the requirements of the domain. This way, we ensure the conformity of the VE to the requirements of the domain for which it is being developed and by extension also to the customer's requirements. As a result, development times and efforts can significantly be shortened, while reducing the likelihood of error making. This paper describes an extension to an existing approach called VR-WISE that focuses on reducing development times and efforts of VEs using domain oriented terminology and ontologies.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.1 Multimedia Information Systems

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
X3D, domain specific rules, semantics, virtual environments, virtual reality