Approachs Using Virtual Environments with Mosaic
Sandy Ressler
In the first case an in-line picture of a space can be "walked-through" by allowing the user to select buttons which moves the point-of-view of the user forward, backward, left or right. Each user selection causes a network request to the Mosaic server which renders a new scene and/or loads a new HTML page. This method has the advantage of being a pure Mosaic application and issues of portability are minimized, however at the cost of performance.
Using the second method, creating an independent process, a user is allowed to interact with a graphical process running on the user's workstation. At appropriate times in the interaction the user selects an object. Objects can have a URL associated which is causes the Mosaic process to go to that URL using the remote control facility in the X version of Mosaic. This method allows the user to have a great deal of interaction in real time with dynamic feedback. However issues of portability become more important, as the real time graphics process may be dependent on the particular platform. These techniques demonstrate that the use and interaction with spatially oriented information spaces are practical. Both techniques have advantages and disadvantages which are discussed.