09:00-10:00 KEYNOTE SPEECH – “W3C and immersive 3D worlds in Web browsers – Evolutions of the Web platform”

François Daoust. W3C Consortium

François Daoust is Media and Entertainment Champion at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), tracking and progressing activities of the W3C around the convergence between Web and media. This includes serving as W3C staff contact for the Media Working Group, Second Screen Working Group and GPU for the Web Working Group, exploring and organizing standardization workshops on topics of interest (Games on the Web, Professional media production), and liaising with other organizations on scenarios, needs, existing technical solutions, and identified gaps. W3C develops royalty-free technical specifications and guidelines for the Web. This standards work is accomplished in the open, with input from the broader community. Decisions are taken by consensus.

Keynote speech content:

The Web was created to connect people and share content. From a Web perspective, the notion of metaverse is a proposal to extend the Web platform to enhance user immersion. Creation of these new user experiences supposes that a number of building blocks are in place: 3D, spatial audio, virtual reality, augmented reality, computing capabilities, communications in real-time, etc. Work on these domains has been, and still is, a focus of the W3C in the past few years, leading to technologies, either still in progress or already standardized and supported across browsers, such as WebGPU, the Web Audio API, the WebXR family of specifications, WebAssembly, WebNN, and WebRTC. Combined with the universality of the Web with regards to people and accessibility of content, these enabling technologies make it virtually possible to create all sorts of immersive experiences on the Web.

There’s more to the Web than meets the eye though. Core principles of the Web platform include accessibility, internationalization, privacy, security, and availability across devices. To enforce these principles, access to Web content has always been mediated through a Web browser, also known as a “user agent”. The enabling technologies mentioned above are low-level though and leave users and Web browsers in the dark as to the content being represented. 3D on the Web is a canvas full of triangles. Virtual Reality on the Web is a pair of canvas full of triangles, coupled with tracking sensors that capture each and every user position. How can web browsers play their role of intermediaries in an immersive experience? How can the core principles of the Web continue to be guaranteed? What technical changes to core Web technologies are needed? Are we there yet?

10:00-11:00 PAPER SESSION 1: “Cultural Heritage and the Metaverse”

FP 9: “Tirtha – An Automated Platform to Crowdsource Images and Create 3D Models of Heritage Sites”, Jyotirmaya Shivottam and Subhankar Mishra

SP 16: “Web-based geolocated, teleoperated and interactive XR tours for cultural inheritance”, Guillermo Pacho Rodríguez, Bruno Simões, Breno da Costa Paulo and Ana Domínguez Fanlo

SP 20: “Venus in the bath – digital partial reconstruction of the shape of a roman statuette”, Felix Horn

11:00-11:30h COFFEE BREAK

11:30-13:30 PAPER SESSION 2: “Standardization”

FP 17: “MORGAN: MPEG Original Reference Geometric Avatar Neutral”, Quentin Avril, Joao Regateiro, Philippe-Henri Gosselin, François Le Clerc and Philippe Guillotel.

FP 6: “Increasing Web3D Accessibility with Audio Captioning”, Nicholas Polys and Mohd Sheeban Wasi

FP 14: “Progressive Network Streaming of Textured Meshes in the Binary glTF 2.0 Format”, Wouter Lemoine and Maarten Wijnants

FP 40: “Conceptualizing I3S encoding for OGC CityGML 3.0 Building Model”, Rushikesh Padsala, Sanghmitra Banerjee, Tamrat Belayneh, Thunyathep Santhanavanich and Volker Coors

SP 25: “Combining FAIR principles and long-term archival of 3D data”, Matthieu Quantin, Sarah Tournon, Valentin Grimaud, Florent Laroche and Xavier Granier

13:30-14:30h INFORMAL LUNCH

14:30-16:00 PAPER SESSION 3: “Interaction and Navigation in the Metaverse”

FP 29: “Mobile and Immersive Presentation of User Interfaces of Household Appliances for Marketing”, Paweł Sobociński and Krzysztof Walczak

SP 23: “MazeVR: Immersion and Interaction Using Google Cardboard and Continuous Gesture Recognition on Smartwatches”, Thamer Nascimento, Deborah Fernandes, Gabriel Vieira, Juliana Felix, Murillo Castro and Fabrizzio Soares

SP 33: “Integrating XR Content in X3DOM: Supporting Navigation and Custom Functions in X3D Scenes”, Raghav Sethi, Andreas Plesch, Timo Sturm and Nicholas Polys

14:30-16:00 PRIVATE MEETING –GraphicsVision.ai

16:00-16:30h COFFEE BREAK

18:00-20:00h Free Time in the City

08:30-09:30 KEYNOTE SPEECH – “Compression factors for realistic 3D graphics”

Prof. Marius Preda. Institut MINES-Telecom

Marius Preda received the degree in engineering from the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest Bucharest, Romania, in 1998, the Ph.D. degree in mathematics and computer science from University Paris V, Paris, France, in 2002, and the eMBA degree from the IMT Business School, Paris, in 2015.

He is currently Associate Professor with the Institut MINES-Télécom, Paris, and also the Convenor of the MPEG 3D Graphics and Haptics Working Group of ISO. He contributed to several international standards with technologies in the fields of 3-D graphics coding, virtual worlds, and augmented reality.

Keynote speech content:

For several decades, the compression of 3D graphics remained a compelling subject of research; however, its tangible impact on practical applications was limited. One predominant reason for this limited applicability was the relatively low resolution of 3D objects, primarily crafted by artists utilizing authoring tools. Recent innovations in capturing 3D scenes and objects, either as point clouds or derivative meshes, have substantially altered this scenario. Such content embodies an extensive data volume, posing challenges for its incorporation into mainstream applications. Yet, the straightforwardness in capturing and rendering their spatial details has escalated their popularity in immersive volumetric data representation.This discourse elucidates contemporary methodologies employed in the compression of realistic 3D graphic content, strategies that have been formulated during the MPEG standardization procedure for the compression of point clouds and dynamic meshes. The first method, termed V-PCC and designed for dense content, transforms the 3D space into 2D patches, leveraging conventional video technologies. In contrast, a second method, G-PCC – designed for sparse point clouds, navigates through the 3D space, generating octree predictors. Empirically, V-PCC attains a compression ratio of 125:1, an object with 1 million points needing a bandwidth of 8 Mbit/s. Concurrently, G-PCC achieves compression ratios up to 10:1 for lossless and 35:1 for lossy configurations. Additionally, a novel strategy focusing on dynamic mesh compression, which involves frame-by-frame simplification and refinements, is delineated. These standardized techniques hold promise in bolstering various domains, such as immersive media, virtual and augmented reality, real-time communication, autonomous navigation, and the preservation of cultural heritage. The talk introduces the perspectives of AI-based graphics compression, an emergent standardization project in MPEG.

11:00-11:30h COFFEE BREAK

11:30-13:30 WORKSHOP 3: “Industrial Use Cases -Part II“

Mixed workshop between academia and companies working in Web 3D Technologies for Industrial Use.

Company presentations with Web3D related Technologies (no proceedings)

• Bexreal. “Mixed and Extended Reality for the Metaverse”. Javier Sordo

Industrial Use Cases (Proceedings)

• Tecnalia. “Exploring the Metaverse: Mixed and Virtual Reality for Collaborative Interaction in an electrical substation”, Igor Quintela, Pablo Aguirrezabal, Roberto Serrano, Gorka Barayazarra, Luis Conde
• Jade University of Applied Sciences. “Digitalisation in quality management – virtual fault localisation in the web browser using X3DOM”, David Roeskamm, Knut Barghorn
• Hamad Bin Khalifa University. “Immersive omnidirectional imaging for the development of Doha Design District at MSheireb Downtown Doha”, Shaikha Al Sulaiti, Jens Schneider and Marco Agus
• Gneiss Concept. “Using LOA3 skeleton with Large size mesh, and SMPL weighting to X3D editing, the “Nitty, Gritty”. Carol McDonald, Katy Schildmeyer, Joe D. Williams, Don Brutzman,John Carlson
• University of Navarra. “Demonstration of XR studio tools for creation of room-size immersive experiences within an extended reality environment”. Oscar Ardaiz, Xabier Olaz, Youssef Benbelkheir, Alvaro Lerga and Lucas Gasco Gonzalez (Poster invited to the industrial session)

13:30-13:45h SPONSOR PITCH

Gold Sponsor – Neil Trevett – Khronos/NVIDIA

13:00-13:30h INFORMAL LUNCH

14:30-16:30 PAPER SESSION 6: “Rendering, Visualization & Visual Analytics”

FP 2: “Real-world large-scale terrain model generation and real-time rendering”, Rui Li

FP 13: “Enhancing Decision Making in MDO through Interactive Visual Analytics on the Web”, Javier Henriques-Gil, Daniel Mejia-Parra and Bruno Simoes.

FP 41: “Web- and mobile-based Urban Bike Route Planner using Urban Regulation-constrained Delaunay Graph”, Juan Camilo Gutierrez-Urrego, Jorge Correa, Placid Ferreira, Saul A. Rivera and Oscar Ruiz-Salguero

FP 42: “Live Free-View Video for Soccer Games”, Islam Amar, Abdala El-Sana and Jihad El-Sana

14:30-16:30 POSTER SESSION + STAND DEMONSTRATORS

Poster authors will present to the interested walking audience their works.

Companies or institutions with Stands will also present their technologies to the walking audience

16:40-17:00hm COFFEE BREAK

18:00-20:00h Free Time in the City

20:00 – 22:00 Social Event – Gala Dinner

08:30-09:00 KEYNOTE SPEECH – “Multi-person shared virtual environments, and implications for the metaverse”

Prof. Mel Slater. Universitat de Barcelona

Mel Slater is a Distinguished Investigator at the University of Barcelona in the Institute of Neurosciences, and co-Director of the Event Lab (Experimental Virtual Environments for Neuroscience and Technology). He was previously Professor of Virtual Environments at University College London in the Department of Computer Science. He held a European Research Council Advanced Grant TRAVERSE 2009-2015 and has now a second Advanced Grant MoTIVE 2018-2023. He is a Research Award Winner of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2021, and was elected to the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy in 2022. He is Field Editor of Frontiers in Virtual Reality, and Chief Editor of the Human Behaviour in Virtual Reality section.

Keynote speech content:

One of the most powerful uses of virtual reality is its support for remotely located people to meet together. Meeting in VR where each person is represented by a virtual body, which naturally exhibits body gestures, head turns, eye movements and facial expressions, where all the participants are in the same virtual space, is a very different experience from teleconferencing. People can maintain eye contact, gesture towards each other, change their physical proxemics relationships, take a walk together, almost as in reality. This talk will go over some of the history of shared VR, and also discuss developments that include meeting yourself, and interacting with celebrities. I will discuss the GuestXR project that combines virtual meetings with Machine Learning in order to address problems that may occur in virtual meetings, and ideas around the development of a Metaverse.

09:30-10:00 Web3D Consortium Townhall

10:00-11:00 Panel Session

11:00-11:30h COFFEE BREAK

11:30-12:00 Fast Forward

12:00-12:30 HANIM and 3D Content Contest

12:30-13:30 Awards Ceremony

13:30-14:30h INFORMAL LUNCH

14:30-16:30 WORKSHOP 4: “Building 3D Web Interoperability for the Metaverse“

16:30 END OF CONFERENCE