The virtual museum: Interactive 3D navigation of a multimedia database

Abstract The Virtual Museum is an interactive, electronic museum where users can move from room to room, and select any exhibit in a room for more detailed examination. The exhibits in the museum are educational, encompassing topics such as medicine, plant growth, the environment, and space. To facilitate interaction with the museum, a new method for navigating through a prerendered 3D space, and interacting with objects in that space has been developed, called ‘virtual navigation’. Virtual navigation employs real‐time video decompression for the display of, and interaction with, high‐quality computer animation. In addition, a representation for 3D objects in animated sequences is used which permits pixel‐accurate, frame‐accurate object picking, so that a viewer can select any 3D object to trigger movement within the 3D space, to examine an exhibit in animated form, or to play a digital movie or soundtrack. The use of precomputed video permits 3D navigation in a realistic‐looking space, without requiring special‐purpose graphics hardware.