Three-Dimensional information system on the World Wide Web

With the advent of new technologies it is possible to create information systems that provide the required information in a userfriendly and natural way. New software tools allow us to generate realistic three-dimensional scenes which the user can walk through while searching for desired data. The nature of the information can be of two kinds. Static data, including for example the names of the professors, the location of labs etc. Dynamic data is the second kind and it can be illustrated by the presence of persons in seminar rooms or labs, processes that take place in the labs like measurements, long lasting experiments and so on. In this paper we present a solution that allows us to integrate both kinds of information into one information system. For the description of the synthetic scenes the Virtual Reality Modeling Language is used. Capturing of the dynamic process in the real environment is mediated by video camera. To get maximum information from the surrounding world, we provide an interface to control the viewing direction of the camera from an arbitrary distant location. This allows for retrieving specific information from an arbitrary place in the real environment. The actual and synthetic three-dimensional information is integrated into one system. In the network environment it is possible to distribute both kinds of information and to create a basis for discussions.