Realism and simplicity of virtual experiment scene building can influence the usage of virtual educational experiment applications. This paper proposes an image based method of experiment scene building for Virtual Educational Experiments. Firstly, virtual educational experiment components are extracted from images of experiment instrument by using the interactive method of object extraction. Then, the corresponding logical model descriptions are attached to the extracted components. Finally, the components required in a specific experiment are inserted into the selected virtual experiment scene and are connected interactively. A routing algorithm based on equivalent connection line is designed to make the generated line connections between components clear and legible. A virtual experiment scene building system, named VE Scene builder, has been implemented and widely used. The feedbacks demonstrated that our system can rapidly generate realistic and legible virtual experiment scene.

Virtual experiments have been used in education for a long time. However, most of the virtual experiments are modeled only for some special subjects, and are programmed case by case. To handle these problems, an online system of Virtual Educational Experiments (VEEs) is designed to develop various virtual experiments and simplify the virtual experiment modeling by reusing the existed experiment components. Based on the system of VEEs, we proposed a method of modeling and visualizing dynamic experiment components. Firstly, the dynamic experiment components are modeled based on the combination of images and graphics. Then the visualization of the dynamic experiment components is designed for multidisciplinary virtual experiments. The system has been running in some colleges and universities for several months. The tests show that it can rapidly model dynamic experiment components and realistically visualize the dynamic experiment components for the system of VEEs.