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.
BuildingANARI
Instructions for how to build ANARI on Linux. This is the basic ANARI, independent of VR capabilities, which will be documented separately.
Building ANARI on Linux
The generic ANARI SDK has minimal system requirements to build. However, for the GPU-accelerated backends, there generally will be additional required features (such as Cuda or Optix).
When building ANARI, there is a choice between downloading/cloning the reference ANARI-SDK, and separately obtaining the GPU accelerated backends, or it is possible to download the pseudo-Superbuild that will download selected backends, and do a complete build.
Prerequisites
ANARI makes use of the CMake build system. You should have at least version 3.11 of CMake.
Cloning ANARI
Clone from the Khronos Github ANARI reposoitory:
% git clone https://github.com/KhronosGroup/ANARI-SDK.gitConfiguring the Build and Installing
Configuring and compiling the build:
% mkdir ANARI-SDK/Build
% cd ANARI-SDK/Build
% cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=... -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Debug -DBUILD_CTS:BOOL=OFF -DBUILD_TESTING:BOOL=OFF -DBUILD_VIEWER:BOOL=ON ..
% make
% make installRunning ANARI
The ANARI build process includes a simple tutorial application that will render a scene consisting of a pair of triangles into two image files (one with the first pass of the render, and one with a later pass). An optional "anariViewer" may also be built which contains a handful of reference scenes, along with an OBJ viewer.
Running the ANARI tutorial example
% bin/anariTutorial
% display *.ppmRunning the ANARI viewer example
% bin/anariViewer