Web-based 3D visualization of multimedia data

Over the past decade navigating in the digital world has mainly remained through a 2D interface, due to the lack of computer power and cheap enough appropriate software. Now that emerging technologies for 3D graphics generation like VRML - the Virtual Reality Modeling Language - are coming to the consumer market, new challenges in the area of information visualization within a 3D environment are initiated. We describe in this paper a next-generation approach to information visualization, available for all world-wide-web users. New 3D virtual worlds are generated in real-time depending on the retrieved information. Applications range from Education to Virtual Shops for Electronic Commerce.