Increasing efficiency in visualizing large sets of 3D models on the web

This paper investigates the behaviour of 3D Models on the web. The advent of WebGL as a tool for rendering 3D Models and Animation on web pages without the use of plugins opens up limitless avenues for virtual reality on the internet. In the near future, real life virtual environment consisting of thousands of complex 3D models will be a common feature across the globe, but this will depend on how effective and efficient the rendering of these models will be. In this research we identified and investigated on how algorithms can improve rendering performance in visualizing large set of 3D objects (textured and non-textured) on the web. Raycasting and Octree were identified, analyzed, implemented, tested and compared before we proposed a new algorithm by combining both Raycasting + Octree for improved performance. Three.js WebGL Framework was used to evaluate identified algorithms for loading and rendering of 3D models. We made use of different models with low, medium and high vertex count for testing and our proposed algorithm proved to be very promising against existing algorithms.