ATON 3.0 framework

Official ATON website | Telegram open-group | Live examples |

ATON framework - designed, developed and coordinated by B. Fanini (CNR ISPC, ex ITABC) - allows to create scalable, collaborative and cross-device 3D Web-Apps (mobile, desktop and immersive VR) targeting Cultural Heritage exploiting modern web standards, without any installation required for final users. ATON offers:

Responsive, adaptive and scalable presentation of interactive 3D content (mobile, desktop PCs, museum kiosks, immersive VR devices)
Real-time collaborative multi-user features (VRoadcast module)
Immersive VR (WebXR) for 3-DOF and 6-DOF devices
Multi-resolution for massive 3D datasets through OGC standards
Multi-touch interfaces
Spatial UI (3D labels, buttons, etc...) targeting immersive XR sessions
Built-in navigation modes, including orbit, first-person, device-orientation and immersive VR
3D semantic annotations including free-form volumetric shapes
Fast, real-time 3D queries on visible and semantic graphs and UI nodes
Built-in front-end ("Hathor") with WYSIWYG rich HTML5 content editor
Built-in profiler (automatically adapt 3D presentation to different devices)
Built-in services to access 3D collections and scenes for multiple users via authentication
Built-in export of 3D scenes/models using different formats (gltf/glb, obj, usd,...) right from the browser
Event-driven API for fully customizable events (local and synchronous collaborative contexts)
360 panoramas and virtual tours
Physically-Based Rendering (PBR) for advanced materials and custom shaders for complex representations, including latest extensions
Advanced lighting, including IBL and multiple Light Probes
Camera/POV transitions, viewpoint handling and custom navigation constraints
Complex scene-graph manipulation, hierarchical culling, instancing, composition and cascading transformations
Scalable deployment, from low-cost SBCs (e.g. Raspberry Pi) to large infrastructures
Multi-temporal (4D) visualization
Easily extensible through plug&play apps architecture and plugins

The framework also provides a built-in front-end and services based on Node.js for deployment on servers, infrastructures or single-board computers; real-time collaborative multi-user features and support for remote/immersive visual analytics.

Getting started (quick)

Install Node.js for your operating system.
Install (or update) required modules from main ATON folder by typing:

npm install

Deploy ATON main service on local machine simply using:

npm start

Open http://localhost:8080 on your browser.

Citation

You can cite ATON framework using this open-access publication with the following BibTeX entry:

@article{fanini2021aton,
  title={ATON: An Open-Source Framework for Creating Immersive, Collaborative and Liquid Web-Apps for Cultural Heritage},
  author={Fanini, Bruno and Ferdani, Daniele and Demetrescu, Emanuel and Berto, Simone and d’Annibale, Enzo},
  journal={Applied Sciences},
  volume={11},
  number={22},
  pages={11062},
  year={2021},
  publisher={Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute}
}

or - as software - using the Zenodo DOI with the following BibTeX entry:

@software{aton2020_4618387,
  author       = {Bruno Fanini},
  title        = {ATON framework},
  year         = 2020,
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  version      = {3.0},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.4618387},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4618387}
}

Publications

Main bibliographical reference (open access) of the framework is:

Fanini, B., Ferdani, D., Demetrescu, E., Berto, S., & d’Annibale, E. (2021). ATON: An Open-Source Framework for Creating Immersive, Collaborative and Liquid Web-Apps for Cultural Heritage. Applied Sciences, 11(22), 11062.

You can find here a complete list of publications where ATON was employed in different national and international projects.

Contribute

You are more than welcome to contribute to the project by spotting bugs/issues and providing code or solutions through pull requests to fix or improve ATON functionalities (see TODO list below). Get in touch here on github, through the telegram open-group or through the other channels.

TODO list

Move and refactor 2D user interface routines from ATON.FE into ATON.UI component (2D labels, popup system, input search, etc.)
Rewrite Hathor UI elements using new routines from ATON.UI.*
Improve main landing page (public gallery), port to ejs and provide more customization
New REST API (v2)
Rewrite Shu using ejs
Improve Shu UI (e.g. new scene, galleries) using new routines from ATON.UI