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Introduction:<br />

Cyberschool - S<strong>in</strong>gapore Polytechnic Model<br />

Eric Cheung,<br />

Ng Song Cheng,<br />

Ho Lai Har<br />

Dept. of Electrical Eng<strong>in</strong>eer<strong>in</strong>g<br />

S<strong>in</strong>gapore Polytechnic<br />

500 Dover Road, S<strong>in</strong>gapore 139651<br />

email : echeung@sp.ac.sg<br />

This paper describes a project conducted <strong>in</strong> S<strong>in</strong>gapore Polytechnic. The project aims to develop tools for<br />

"Cyber-school", which uses World Wide Web (WWW) to create, visualise and ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong> a uniform def<strong>in</strong>ition of<br />

objects, scene arrangements, and spatio-location which is consistent across all of the Internet. Several<br />

technologies have been <strong>in</strong>vented to handle the scale problems associated with widely-shared spaces, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g<br />

a distributed server methodology for resolv<strong>in</strong>g spatial requests. Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML)<br />

[Name 94] is <strong>in</strong>troduced as a beg<strong>in</strong>n<strong>in</strong>g proposal for WWW visualisation.<br />

It seems reasonable to propose that WWW should be extended, br<strong>in</strong>g<strong>in</strong>g its conceptual model from two<br />

dimensions, out, at a right angle, <strong>in</strong>to three. To do this, two th<strong>in</strong>gs are required; extensions to HTML to<br />

describe both geometry and space; and a unified representation of space across Internet. With the VRML 2.0<br />

[VRML 96] supports complex 3-D animation, simulations, and behaviors by allow<strong>in</strong>g Java and JavaScript<br />

programmers to write scripts that act upon VRML objects. It is shown that the usage of VRML is a very<br />

efficient and powerful method for the transport of <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion over the Internet.<br />

Objectives<br />

(a) To provide tools for different organisation (<strong>in</strong>dustries) to implement VR to the Internet by means of VRML<br />

(b) To provides a structural approach <strong>in</strong> describ<strong>in</strong>g a virtual reality scene.<br />

(c) To develop a prototype model call "Cyber-school", to provide <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion about Polytechnic.<br />

(d) To provide a true desktop VR tools benefits to Education<br />

Implementation<br />

Basically there are 3 ways to create a VRML world:<br />

i Create and edit a VRML text file by hand<br />

ii Use a conversion program to convert an exist<strong>in</strong>g non-VRML 3-D file to VRML<br />

iii Use an author<strong>in</strong>g package to create models and position them with<strong>in</strong> a world<br />

This project will be us<strong>in</strong>g the comb<strong>in</strong>ation of the 3 ways to create the VR world for user to walk & browse<br />

through.<br />

Phase 1 of the project is to create a Virtual Walkthrough model of the Campus (Dept. of Electrical<br />

Eng<strong>in</strong>eer<strong>in</strong>g). In total there are more than 20 laboratories <strong>in</strong> the department itself. All the labs set up will be<br />

transformed to the VR model and later on can connect to the headgear and gloves to control the movement.<br />

The user will be able to walk <strong>in</strong> to different labs and browse through the whole lab. Multimedia will also be<br />

used <strong>in</strong> the model. User will be able to watch some of the experiment and even ask question about the subjects

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