Distributed Virtual Environments for Managing Country Parks in Hong Kong: A Case Study of the Shing Mun Country Park

Distributed virtual environments (DVEs) are environments that are not only used for managing and delivering multi-source, multi-dimensional, geographical information, but also enable geographically distributed users to navigate in a 3D space, and to interact with objects and with other online users. In this paper, we design DVEs to disseminate 2D and 3D data and to implement public participation in the management of the country parks in Hong Kong. The system framework, geo-data model, and user's interface are discussed for designing DVEs. Based on the virtual reality modeling language (VRML), Java, and VRML External Authoring Interface (EAI) classes, a balanced client/server architecture is employed. In view of multi-source and multi-dimensional data, the object-oriented approach is utilized to design 3D geo-object models for web-based distribution. Considering the Internet bandwidth and performance of client computers, we adopt multi-block and multi-level approaches to the design of 3D geo-objects. The user's interface provides capabilities for implementing 2D and 3D view, data query and analysis, object addition/removal, and 3D avatar-based and text-based communication. This paper presents a case study of the Shing Mun Country Park in Hong Kong, where a prototype DVE, called VirtualPark, was developed.

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