Immersive Visualization / IQ-Station Wiki
This site hosts information on virtual reality systems that are geared toward scientific visualization, and as such often toward VR on Linux-based systems. Thus, pages here cover various software (and sometimes hardware) technologies that enable virtual reality operation on Linux.
The original IQ-station effort was to create low-cost (for the time) VR systems making use of 3DTV displays to produce CAVE/Fishtank-style VR displays. That effort pre-dated the rise of the consumer HMD VR systems, however, the realm of midrange-cost large-fishtank systems is still important, and has transitioned from 3DTV-based systems to short-throw projectors.
FreeVR
FreeVR VR integration library
FreeVR is a VR integration library currently maintained at Indiana University's Advanced Visualization Lab. The design approach of FreeVR was to provide an API that call-for-call lines up with the CAVE library from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Occasionally new functionality was added, but little was left out. Another philosophical decision was to be as minimalist as possible, depending on as few other resources, and thus being easy to compile on just about any OS version.
There are pre-existing FreeVR Applications written at the University of Illinois and DRI as part of our immersive visualization ensemble. But before using a FreeVR application, one must first install and configure FreeVR.
FreeVR Versions
The FreeVR API has been very stable, so most versions from the past few years will work, though of course bugs are eliminated in each version and a handful of nifty features are generally added. The most recently released version of FreeVR (as of this writing [10/31/12]) is 0.6c.
FreeVR Dependencies
Basic FreeVR depends only on two packages which are generally installed on any self-respecting computer:
- OpenGL
- X-windows
Optionally, FreeVR can work with:
- OpenSceneGraph
Nothing else should need to be installed for the library, though some applications will make use of additional libraries.
Installing FreeVR
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Configuring FreeVR
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Compiling FreeVR Applications
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