VR Systems



I have participated in the design and implementation of 3 generations of our VR system "Virtual Design" .

Virtual Design I

VR_Generic.mpg
This was our very first VR system ( code name "Generic" ). This was not really designed, it just grew out of and around a main loop.

I developed the library for communicating with all kinds of VR devices ( spacemouse, cricket, boom, Fastrak, Ascension, Cyberglove, VPL Glove, etc... ). It featured a logical input device abstraction, distributed servers, predictive filtering and distortion correction.

It was built on top of a multi-platform renderer called Vis-á-Vis , which was developed in our department.



Virtual Design II

This was designed and implemented mainly by myself ( code name "Walk" ). It was built on top of our renderer "Y" developed mainly by Dirk Reiners. It featured some sort of behavior graph built around the concept of actions, events, triggers and objects. It was still implemented in C, but it could load modules ( sort of plug-ins ) at run-time. A lot of demos and projects were done using this system. Today it is being sold and developed further by the spin-off company VRCom.


Cave.mpg
Frankfurt.mpg
Plattform.mpg

Windkanal.mpg
Ffm_Hochhaus.mpg
OP2000.mpg

Radiosity.mpg
Schiffsbau.mpg
Sitzkiste.mpg


Kelvin

This is a complete redesign of Virual Design II. It is designed and implemented object-oriented, and the component-oriented framework is much more advanced than VD2 in that everything is a plug-in, and all plug-ins can be replaced at run-time. It features a VRML-like behavior graph and is built on top of the new multi-platform renderer OpenSG. It is our first true multi-platform VR system.

More projects
Gabriel Zachmann
Last modified: Sat Sep 10 16:02:00 MDT 2005