Building multi-platform 3D virtual museum exhibitions with Flex-VR

The paper presents a method of modelling and dynamic multi-platform presentation of interactive 3D web content. The method is based on a multi-platform extension of previously developed Flex-VR approach, which provides a rich data model for 3D content, covering both the geometrical and the behavioural aspects. Based on the model, interactive 3D presentations can be dynamically generated in different formats, allowing seamless presentation of 3D content on different platforms — different web browsers with different capabilities and sets of plug-ins. In the paper, application of the method to the cultural heritage sector is presented. A designer or administrator of a virtual museum exhibition can set the preferred methods of content presentation, which are then matched against browser capabilities to present the content in the best way without requiring additional software installation. Due to the use of several alternative presentation formats, the proposed method can successfully render 3D content in vast majority of cases.