Intervision3D: Online 3D Visualisation and Conferencing

The use of Internet communication technologies in distributed teams has been carried out for well over 10 years. In this time, various methods to communicate and transfer information have been developed. A large amount of effort has been placed on enabling normal conversation to take place and it could be said, that with technologies like Skype, this is established. This enables planning partners to discuss, but we still need to convey what they are discussing. In short, the contents are still lacking. Technologies exist to allow users to share files or images, however this does not nearly reach the intensity or quality of discussions when partners are sitting together in front of a drawing or model. At best, screen sharing allows participants to see the same image but with low resolution and bad system response. The goal of the project is to allow distributed team members to discuss design issues with a common 3D model where participants can manipulate the model together in real time.. The speed of the system is also buttressed by the simplicity of the application: as a Java applet, it is possible to start the Intervision3D system in any browser or as a separate applet on any system. Files can be imported and then rendered using the JOGL Engine (Java Bindings for Open GL). JOGL allows the full Open GL suite to be used in rendering the model including lighting and textures: even normal PCs can do this quite well. The first implementation of the system is within an existing internet-based Design Studio and the paper elucidates how the first uses of the system have (partially) helped to increase the exchange of design ideas over the Internet.