Xtivia Technologies

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Java 3D In Action

Xtivia Technologies

Xtivia Technologies is a fast growing e-commerce technology and solutions company with offices throughout North America and Europe. Xtivia's latest offering, the Xtivia Reality Server (XRS), is a revolutionary technology that allow users not only to experience products, but be immersed in a virtual environment taking the user to a new level of interactivity on the internet. Xtivia has combined its knowledge of databases, e-commerce, and the internet and developed a technology that will enable developers to design new and unique B2B and B2C applications as well as interactive web sites. All interfaces will become rich 3D environments filled with interactive objects where users have the ability to choose where to go within the 3D environment. Xtivia's Demo Store clearly demonstrates how a user can be immersed in a retail shopping environment using the XRS.

To deliver this cutting edge technology to the world, Xtivia's dedicated development team began by designing the overall architecture for the XRS with an open, flexible system in mind. Through this design in combination with Java 3D, Xtivia has created a 3D environment that completely immerses the user through features and experiences not available today. These capabilities include:

• Free navigation in the virtual 3D environment
• Behaviors are assigned to objects so that a user can interact with the objects
• Personalized user experiences through dynamically created and data driven environments
• Tight integration with middleware allows for implementation speed by taking advantage of existing transaction and personalization facilities
• Technology is built on solid expandable infrastructure with tools to manage the solution

Clearly the combination of all of these features is unprecedented and will allow the developers to make a quantum leap in the interactivity and customization of their applications and web sites.

Advantages of Java 3D

Xtivia chose to use Java 3D to take advantage of its many features:

• The Java 3D API enhances the XRS technology by providing platform independent support for Internet based immersive and interactive virtual environments.
• The XRS's advanced rendering engine capabilities are further enhanced by Java 3D's ability to take advantage of the underlying graphics acceleration capabilities of the target platforms.
• Scene Graph - By utilizing the Java 3D scene graph, the XRS architecture maximizes performance by efficiently culling objects which are not currently active.
• Behavior Engine - The Java 3D behavior mechanism enabled our development team to spend time creating behaviors instead of writing a custom behavior engine for each virtual application.

New Interactive Applications

The combination of the architecture and Java 3D allows for creation of sophisticated and interactive 3D environments resulting in new and unique user experiences. Several applications that can easily be foreseen using the new technology are as follows:

Interactive Web Sites - The XRS allows for a much more dynamic and interactive web site. Users will be able to randomly travel down different paths. The environment can be changed or personalized at any time with clips, pictures or interactive objects across the landscape. Web sites will have the same level of interaction as video games which will allow for not only functionality of the site, but also for entertainment value. Web site designers will no longer be constrained by 2 dimensional static pages and can now think dynamically.

B2C Retail -The XRS allows for a different level of shopping . For instance instead of having a panoramic view of a store in which a user can point to items from a single perspective, a user could randomly browse items on a shelf and then pick up an item for further inspection. Furthermore, if a user searched for items such as a digital analog cellular phone, in stead of a series of thumbnails, a table with all of the phones may be displayed. The user could walk down the table, pick up and open each cellular phone for comparison. Information such as specifications would also appear for each phone in a separate area.

Because the environment is dynamically created and data driven, these environments can be personalized based on datamining analysis at anytime. In the example above, if the user examines a certain phone more 3 times, then a coupon for the phone or some accessory may appear in real time with out the user having to click on the mouse.

B2B - Applications in the B2B area will become more commonplace although the solutions will be customized. Potential applications include visual search methods of video clips,instructing customers in the function, modification, and use of products or customer support applications where users could get instructional information via 3D renderings or highlighting the status of a complex process in 3 dimensions.

There are many more applications that will arise as the technology matures. Xtivia expects to set the standard in new innovative Internet interactivity and its partnership with Sun will be one of its keys to success.