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Developing semantic VR-shops for e-Commerce

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Abstract

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 the 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 which 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 meet 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.

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Notes

  1. Products have a left, a top and a front by default.

  2. Specified by the designer when defining behavior for products.

  3. Currently, the shopping cart is also listed here. From a user point of view this is strange. It will be adapted in the next version (see also further work).

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Acknowledgments

This research is carried out in the context of the Ontobasis and the VR-DeMo projects; both projects are funded by the ‘Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders’ (IWT). It is also partially funded by the FWO (Fund of Scientific Research—Flanders).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussel, Belgium

    Olga De Troyer, Frederic Kleinermann, Haithem Mansouri, Bram Pellens, Wesley Bille & Vladimir Fomenko

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  1. Olga De Troyer
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  2. Frederic Kleinermann
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  3. Haithem Mansouri
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  4. Bram Pellens
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  5. Wesley Bille
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  6. Vladimir Fomenko
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Olga De Troyer.

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De Troyer, O., Kleinermann, F., Mansouri, H. et al. Developing semantic VR-shops for e-Commerce. Virtual Reality 11, 89–106 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-006-0058-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-006-0058-y

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