Streaming Compressed 3D Data on the Web using JavaScript and WebGL
Résumé
With the development of Web3D technologies, the delivery and
visualization of 3D models on the web is now possible and is bound to
increase both in the industry and for the general public. However the
interactive remote visualization of 3D graphic data in a web browser
remains a challenging issue. Indeed, most of existing systems suffer
from latency (due to the data downloading time) and lack of adaptation
to heterogeneous networks and client devices (i.e. the lack of levels
of details); these drawbacks seriously affect the quality of user
experience.This paper presents a technical solution for streaming and
visualization of compressed 3D data on the web. Our approach leans upon
three strong features: (1) a dedicated progressive compression
algorithm for 3D graphic data with colors producing a binary compressed
format which allows a progressive decompression with several levels of
details; (2) the introduction of a JavaScript halfedge data structure
allowing complex geometrical and topological operations on a 3D mesh;
(3) the multi-thread JavaScript / WebGL implementation of the
decompression scheme allowing 3D data streaming in a web browser.
Experiments and comparison with existing solutions show promising
results in terms of latency, adaptability and quality of user
experience.