A 3D user interface for visualisation of Web-based data-sets
Iain M. Brown · 1998
The evolution of the Internet and the pronounced increase in spatial data supply means that new interfaces are required to improve access to geographical information. A 3D user-interface provides a powerful and intuitive mechanism to enable this by bringing the enhanced data exploration and multidimensional visualisation capabilties of virtual environments to the desktop. Development of such interactive tools is enabled by linking scene content produced by the Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) with program code from JAVA, thereby allowing dynamic 3D content to be accessed through a Web browser. A prototype system has been developed which integrates a wide variety of terrain-based geoscience data-sets for scientific visualisation and education. By developing a more flexible user interface, large diverse spatio-temporal data-sets can be explored for multi-disciplinary research and public information made more accessible across the Internet.