Mosaic, the first Internet "killer application", has brought the Internet into the popular culture. Users can begin to use simple point and click interfaces rather than a myriad of arcane commands and protocols. As another step towards a more natural interface we propose to use a first person point of view (POV) model which allows a user to interact with information in an intuitive manner.
Surrogate travel, has been around in a graphical form for over 15 years. The concept of first person POV has been used to convey a sense of place to a user interacting with a computer. The nature of the interaction has varied quite a bit depending on the context of the application. In the late seventies the "Aspen Movie Map" work at the Architecture Machine Lab (now known as the Media Lab) at MIT pioneered the concept of real time surrogate travel with photo realistic images [Donelson][Lippman]. The movie map work was extended to the use of these environments as front ends to information [Bolt][Herot]. More recently Apple Computer is in the process of commercializing the concept of first person POV interfaces with QuickTime VR [Quinlan]. Travel though an abstract space such as a hierarchical file system has been demonstrated with Silicon Graphics' FSN [FSN].
Examples of first person POV interfaces come from many domains. Games such as 7th Guest, Myst, and Jurrasic Park (popular games on PC, Mac, Nintendo and Sega platforms) all allow the player to travel in a first person POV manner. Information organizers such Packard Bell`s Navigator [Newsbytes] and Apples eWorld [Mossberg] interface to on-line services all use a first person POV metaphor to organize information and give users a sense of place and structure.
One effort in particular, the call for the creation of VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) has stimulated a number of efforts to link virtual environment to the World Wide Web (WWW). A number of interesting language proposals [Labyrinth] and demonstration systems [WebOOGL] can be found at the VRML [VRML] site.
Coupling of virtual environments with Mosaic and WWW is only the next logical extension to these spatial types of interfaces. Mosaic has provided a uniform interface to the Internet and WWW, spatial interfaces can lead towards a more intuitive interface.
Integration of a virtual environment with Mosaic can take two forms the in-line graphics or external application approaches. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages as discussed in the following sections.