Design and Implement Collaborative Virtual Environment System for Learning Butterfly Lifecycle

Abstract

VRML - the Virtual Reality Modeling Language - is a description language for 3D worlds. The VRML supports sophisticated multimedia presentations and user interactions which has become the most popular 3D-object description language on Internet. However, current VRML technology only supports single-user navigation and interaction. the lack of a "collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) standard" in VRML has hindered the development of VRML-based multi-user application. In this paper, we present a VRML-based "shared collaborative virtual environments" in an attempt to construct a multi-user 3D virtual butterfly ecosystem on the Internet for users to learn Taiwan butterflies. This prototype system integrates Java and VRML technologies to achieve the goal and proposes a solution to the implementation of interactive CVE systems.