1 Background

Mosaic gives access to hypertext documents on Internet, most of which contain primarily text and inline images. However, some documents contain high-resolution images, audio clips, animations and video sequences. Mosaic presents these items by invoking an external viewer like xv, ghostview, or mpeg. Mosaic serves as an interface to a viewer by locating, retrieving, storing the data and calling the viewer with the appropriate arguments. Viewers have specific control functionality that allows the user to modify or change viewing parameters of an image, animation or sound. For example, the user may be able to change color, size or crop an image, replay an animation at different speeds or view the animation backwards.

Recently, Mosaic added forms support which allows the Mosaic user to input parameters and receive back information reflecting their choices. For example, a user may request an image of the United States weather system, designed to their own specifications. CAVEview expands this kind of user driven data and information gathering system to three dimensional computer graphics and virtual reality by presenting interactive CAVE applications within Mosaic HTML documents.

Figure 1: The CAVE

The CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) is a virtual reality environment designed and implemented at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.[3] The CAVE,shown in figure 1, is a surround screen, surround sound, projection based virtual reality environment system. The actual environment is a 10x10x10 foot cube, where images are rear-projected in stereo on 2 or 3 walls, and down-projected onto the floor. The viewer explores a virtual world by moving around inside the cube and grabbing objects with the 'wand', the CAVE input device. In the CAVE, high-resolution stereoscopic images are generated by a multi-processor Silicon Graphics workstation or multiple workstations and rear-projected onto several walls and front projected onto the floor. Several people can be in the CAVE simultaneously all wearing stereo glasses. One person is tracked and as they move in the CAVE, the correct perspective and stereo projections of the environment are updated to match their viewpoint. The rest of the participants are passive viewers, as though watching a 3D movie.

Figure 2: The CAVE Simulator

To aid in the development of CAVE applications, the CAVE Simulator [2] has been developed. The CAVE Simulator emulates the CAVE by providing control of navigation, viewpoint and wand input. Recently, the CAVE has grown in popularity. Many research scientists, application programmers, and artists have begun utilizing the CAVE and the CAVE simulator. As interest in the CAVE grew, there was a need for a presentation tool for CAVE applications. This tool needed to be geared toward the novice user, the individual who has little or no experience with the CAVE environment. This paper presents an application called CAVEview. It's purpose is to serve as a viewing environment for CAVE programs on the World Wide Web using Mosaic.

CAVEview: Mosaic-based Virtual Reality HOME PAGE