X3D experiences on a Hydro Junction digital: A case study of Three Gorges Dam

This work presents our experience in using virtual reality techniques to digitally reconstruct the World famous Hydro Junction- Three Gorges Dam. This paper discusses the work undertaken by the China water museum to develop X3D-based water museum virtual reality system. This system is to deal with difficulties in applying 3D information system in virtual reality experience, which is written in Extensible-3D (X3D) and Java. In order to achieve an accurate 3D representation, the process was divided in phases to better structure and fundament such development: historical data gathering and analysis; 3D modeling and; interactive immersive visualization. Due to the nature of this project, different people from different areas of expertise were involved, working together in a unified development environment. It is our opinion that the online design review has achieved its objectives. However we identified some features that would improve collaboration such as digital 3D annotation and support for online collaboration in current X3D browsers.