The storage and querying of 3D objects for the dynamic composition of VRML worlds

The composition of 3D presentations is a complicated procedure partly facilitated by the introduction of VRML. VRML does not yet support 3D object storage and querying, thus introducing limitations to object reusability. Presentations have to be built from scratch while the necessary information already exists from previous work. This paper presents a method to address this issue by providing the functionality for (re)composing 3D interactive presentations. The participating objects are selected through spatiotemporal criteria. The temporal element is included so as to provide a global treatment to virtual (3D space+time) objects. The objects retrieved this way form a repository, and are further transformed in order to satisfy the requirements of the composed presentation. The entire framework complies with the VRML standard.