25 years – CCG and Expo ’98

Expo’ 98 celebrates 20 years in 2018, being inaugurated in May 22, 1998.

The history of CCG is linked to Expo’ 98, since Centro de Computação Gráfica was responsible for the Virtual Oceanarium project and for the development of the first version of Expo ’98’ website.

CCG and the Virtual Oceanarium

Integrated into the INI-GraphicsNet international network, CCG realized the Virtual Oceanarium project (1996 – 1998), which recreated the environment of the Lisbon Oceanarium, at the time the largest in Europe, with the help of Virtual Reality technologies, allowing virtual navigation by the same.

The Virtual Oceanarium was presented at the Pavilion of Oceanophilia for 6 weeks, passing in October to the Pavilion of Virtual Reality, inaugurating the new “Parque das Nações”.

It was also the cover of the prestigious scientific journal “Communications of the ACM” in 2000, with an article dedicated to the topic [read in full].

Source of illustrations: COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM July 2000/Vol. 43, No. 7

The research and development work of this project was carried out by a team that united Portugal (CCG) and Germany (IGD).

The main component of this work was a real-time simulation system that provided artificial animal species, optimized in order to allow a smooth simulation, animation, and navigation. In addition, it was implemented in a modular way, which allowed easy integration of new species and contents.

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CCG and Expo ’98 website

CCG was also responsible for the development of the 1998 World Exposition first website, which began four or five years before Expo ’98.

Having been founded in 1993, CCG thus began to develop the Expo ’98 website early on, when Expo ’98 did not yet have a domain or server.

Expo’ 98 Homepage, 1994 website, In Topics Magazine 1995