A visual interface for querying ontologically and socially annotated 3D worlds for the web

This work proposes a visual interface for querying sets of 3D worlds for the web, designed by different authors and annotated with both ontological top-down and social bottom-up styles. The goal is to overcome the current situation where most of these worlds are like independent islands that can be accessed only using the modalities that have been designed by their authors. Usually these worlds can't be searched, because there is no high level information associated to the 3D entities that compose them. Our proposal is based on a specification, a software architecture and a set of interfaces that permit a full exploitation of the geometric and textual information contained inside these 3D environments. The applications can be different, from the retrieval of single entities for localization purposes by end users to the retrieval of complex spatial patterns for functional or typological analyses by domain experts. A case study related to cultural heritage is presented.