Bogdan Wiszniewski, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics, Gdansk University of Technology Clear, comprehensive, and educational! This book is a very informative, yet remarkably easy to follow and understand. There is a lot of information packed in, but Authors manage to avoid getting bogged down in a heavy academic tone. Although written by several authors, consistency of the book content is kept well. Authors follow two complementary tracks through the domain of interactive 3D multimedia content technologies: 3D content creation and management, and 3D search and presentation. The content creation and management track moves the book reader far ahead of the classic 3D content standards and methods, capable so far of describing only fixed virtual scenes, by introducing new models, paradigms and methods for dynamic composition of virtual scenes, dynamic content modeling, database modeling of virtual worlds, and building interactive, configurable and multiuser 3D VR/AR environments. Similarly, the search and presentation track introduces a new model of interactive object interactions, a method for accessing the distance between different concepts in a semantic, spatiotemporal dataset, and an innovative approach to 3D visualization of mass Web search results. All through the book new concepts are well illustrated with notations and languages developed by the Authors. I could see various uses for this book: from reference guide, through required graduate course reading up to inspiring survey of ideas for researchers. Marek R. Ogiela, AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland Attractive, interesting and educational What makes this book unique on the international scale is its ability to describe the most recent achievements in advanced multimedia technologies, and in particular the creation of 3D content using known and new standards, algorithms for managing 3D presentation content as well as innovative methods of presenting, describing and searching in 3D content. It has been written by authors who are recognised scientific authorities and have significantly contributed to global IT research. Apart from its high scientific quality, the book is very structured and presents a number of interesting subjects related to interactive multimedia technologies in a way that is clear and understandable to the reader. This monograph represents a collection of the most valuable scientific achievements of recent years, which are very well aligned with the current development trends of modern information technology, namely the search for effective solutions to create, present, securely and efficiently manage 3D visual information in virtual and augmented reality systems. It can form an invaluable source of information for both computer science professionals and students or people not active in this field, but interested in its topics. I wholeheartedly recommend reading this book!
