Robust Transmission of 3D Geometry Over Lossy Networks
Zhihua Chen, Bobby Bodenheimer, and J. Fritz Barnes
Abstract
This paper describes a robust mechanism for transmitting 3D
meshes over the Internet. TCP/IP is an excellent means for
reliable transport over the Internet. However, multi-user, real-time
graphics applications may find TCP transmission disadvantageous
when reception of a mesh is time-critical. To improve speed one
could use an unreliable transmission protocol. Yet typical mesh
compression schemes increase the fragility of the mesh to lossy
transmission. In this paper, we develop a hybrid method of
transmitting meshes over the Internet, built upon progressive
mesh technology. The hybrid method transmits
important visual detail in a lossless manner, but trades off loss
of visually less important detail for transmission speed. Tests
of the method in a lossy network environment show that the method
improves the transmission time of the mesh with little
degradation in quality.
Bobby Bodenheimer 
Last modified: Wed Jun 25 14:17:06 CDT 2003