Developing semantic VR-shops for e-Commerce

Increased bandwidth, cheaper and faster hardware, dedicated technology and the success of e- commerce make VR-shops feasible. VR-shops are similar to the e-shops currently available on the Web, with this difference that the products are visualized as 3D objects in a virtual world. Although VR-shops do not require sophisticated VR technology, they should be very flexible: it should be easy to add, remove and rearrange products; and to add, change or remove functionality. Therefore, an appropriate approach that can be used by a non-VR expert and that provides a short development time and easy maintenance is necessary. Also usability is very important because this is crucial for the success of VR-shops. In this paper, we present an approach to develop VR-shops that meets these requirements. It allows specifying a VR-shop using high-level conceptual specifications and in terms of domain terminology; semantics are captured by ontologies; existing product information can be incorporated; and the actual code is generated.
Publication Reference
De Troyer, O., Kleinermann, F., Mansouri, H., Pellens, B., Bille, W., Fomenko, V.: "Developing semantic VR-shops for e-Commerce", Special Issue of VIRTUAL REALITY: "Virtual Reality in the e-Society", Vol. 11, pp. 89-106, Eds. G. D. Magoulas, G. Lepouras, C. Vassilakis, Publ. Springer London, ISBN 1359-4338 (2007)

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