Guided Navigation Techniques for 3D Virtual Environment Based on Topic Map

Navigating in a three dimensional (3D) virtual environment is difficult mainly because of limited navigational information that can only offer a screen-size visualization and low level imitation of other human senses. To address this problem, studies on various methods of navigation aid have been carried out. The navigation aid described in this paper was designed by applying the topic map technique, a semantic Web building technology, to a 3D virtual environment. A topic map builds a semantic link map, because it defines the link relations between topics. In the navigation aid's utilization experiment, in which the above mentioned linkage map was applied, looking for represented objects in detail, rather than looking for highly represented objects, was shown to be helpful in navigation. The provision of knowledge in and around the topic was confirmed to be effective for users' object selection during navigation under an unclear state of the object to be pursued.