HTML5-based System for Interoperable 3D Digital Home Applications

Digital home application market shifts just about every month. This means risk for developers struggling to adapt their applications to several platforms and marketplaces while changing how people experience and use their TVs, smartphones and tablets. New ubiquitous and context-aware experiences through interactive 3D applications on these devices engage users to interact with complex 3D scenes in virtual applications. Interactive 3D applications are boosted by emerging standards such as HTML5 and WebGL removing limitations, and transforming the Web into a horizontal application framework to tackle interoperability over the heterogeneous digital home platforms. Developers can apply their knowledge of web-based solutions to design digital home applications, removing learning curve barriers related to platform-specific APIs. However, constraints to render complex 3D environments are still present especially in home media devices. This paper provides a state-of-the-art survey of current capabilities and limitations of the digital home devices and describes a latency-driven system design based on hybrid remote and local rendering architecture, enhancing the interactive experience of 3D graphics on these thin devices. It supports interactive navigation of sophisticated 3D scenes while provides an interoperable solution that can be deployed over the wide digital home device landscape.