3D virtual warehouse on the WEB Michel Buffa (buffa@i3s.unice.fr), Jean-Claude Lafon (jcl@essi.fr) Laboratoire I3S, 06903 Sophia-Antipolis cedex, France Abstract In the emerging field of E-Commerce we show the great potential interest to create 3D virtual shopping cen- ters. The study of a specific application: the creation of an electric household applicants warehouse enables us to highlight the possibilities of the VRML2.0 language to model, visualize and to do interactive walking inside the warehouse. Key features of VRML 2.0 are underlined and new extensions are proposed in order to achieve a better realistic and «human-like» behavior inside the virtual warehouse. 1. Introduction 3D Object manipulation within Web Browsers is now available to a large audience as the two main products (Netscape and Internet Explorer) includes the VRML 2.0 visualization plug-in by default. One potential application of great interest is the cre- ation of «virtual shopping centers» in the field of E-Com- merce. This is a very promising field for 3D graphics development for the next years as it is forecast in the recent article on the business of computer graphics [1]. Many Web sites are already devoted to E-commerce (ama- zon is perhaps the best known) and they have some graph- ical illustrations of their products. For instance, in a Web Site devoted to electric house- holds applicants (electric cooker, refrigerator, oven, dish- washer, washing machine…), the customer can select a product according some criterions: first the type, the dimensions, the price … Then the site displays the differ- ent products as pictures. Technical informations are also available. Then it is possible to do purchases orders. There is no 3D representations and manipulation of the different objects but some kind of animations are displayed, in fact with a sequence of pictures of the same object. Some web sites are devoted to very specific business to business applications. For instance in the web site Manegerie (www.manegerie.com) you can rent or buy sec- ond - hand rides (kids or adults rides). This is an interest- ing application of E-business on the WEB as the real exposition of such huge objects is costly and difficult to organize. You can find rides such as: Auto-Scooter, shak- ers, ranger, Giant Wheel, rollers coasters, break dance … you can rent or buy second - hand rides (kids or adults rides). This is an interesting application of E-business on the WEB as the real exposition of such huge objects is costly and difficult to organize. Each ride is displayed with a picture and technical details but there is no 3D represen- tation. Only very few E-commerce web sites already use some 3D representations of objects. In the site Computer- land (www.computerland.co.il/) it is possible to visit vir- tual shopping center of replacement parts of computers, made in VRML: interactive walking inside the shopping center is possible. Each kind of product is represented by only one 3D object, whose selection enable the display of an html page with the list of all objects of this kind with their prices. In the site Machine shop (www.acu-rite.com/ products/applications/vrml/) an Interactive walking is pos- sible inside a virtual warehouse made in VRML. The start- ing room gives access to other rooms containing different kinds of machines (For instance vertical knee mill, planer mill and horizontal boring mill in the milling room). As in the previous site, by selecting one machine, you can dis- play an html description of the technical and commercial informations on this particular machine. This page includes a VRML bloc which enable to visualize the machine under different angles and also to select the spe- cific informations on the product. The HTML page gives also informations on the machine and some pictures. To sum up There exists already some commercial web sites with 3D representations of objects in VRML, but only as illus- trative purposes. All the possibilities of VRML are not used and it seems interesting to study this problem in a more global approach.