Web-based virtual walkthrough of panoramas

Recent advances in Internet and WWW techniques motivate desire for systems with interactive 3D graphics on the Web, which draws attention and effectively assist human understanding with spatial intuitiveness and interactivity. Web-based application with virtual environment walkthrough capability is expected to have a profound impact to the travel based applications, such as virtual e-commerce, online travelling and shopping, just to name a few. However, it is well known that it is extremely difficult to render complex 3D scenes at interactive frame rates through the Web known for their lack of proper ability needed to process large volume of 3D virtual environment data. In order to provide virtual environment navigation on the Web, we propose a hybrid technique which combines both remote geometry rendering and image compression transportation technique. In our approach, the server renders a partial panoramic view, which is based on the user´s viewpoint and last movements or sends image from real life. The server then compress images, and streams the images to the client device, which will progressively build the panoramic representation of the scene. Furthermore, in order to enhance streaming performance and quality of the interaction, we propose to use a prediction of the user´s movements as well as a rate control mechanism within the virtual scene. In this paper we discuss our scheme for Web-based remote rendering and streaming of progressive panoramas. Our results indicate clearly that the proposed solution is able to achieve stable frame rates and throughput in general network environment.