Gnu/Maverik: A Microkernel for Large-Scale Virtual Environments

This paper describes a publicly available virtual reality (VR) system, GNU/MAVERIK, which forms one component of a complete VR operating system. We give an overview of the architecture of MAVERIK, and show how it is designed to use application data in an intelligent way, via a simple, yet powerful, callback mechanism that supports an object-oriented framework of classes, objects, and methods. Examples are given to illustrate different uses of the system and typical performance levels.

[1]  Daniel G. Aliaga,et al.  A Framework for the Real-Time Walkthrough of Massive Models , 1998 .

[2]  David R. Nadeau.  Tutorial: Building Virtual Worlds with VRML , 1999, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[3]  Donald P. Brutzman,et al.  The virtual reality modeling language and Java , 1998, CACM.

[4]  John Rohlf,et al.  IRIS performer: a high performance multiprocessing toolkit for real-time 3D graphics , 1994, SIGGRAPH.

[5]  Roger J. Hubbold,et al.  Virtual reality for large-scale industrial applications , 1998, Future Gener. Comput. Syst..

[6]  Michael Zyda,et al.  Bamboo-a portable system for dynamically extensible, real-time, networked, virtual environments , 1998, Proceedings. IEEE 1998 Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium (Cat. No.98CB36180).

[7]  Toby Howard,et al.  A practical introduction to PHIGS and PHIGS Plus , 1990 .

[8]  Roger J. Hubbold,et al.  Landmarking for navigation of large models , 1999, Comput. Graph..

[9]  Kevin Sowizral,et al.  The Java 3D API Specification , 1997 .

[10]  Roger J. Hubbold,et al.  Navigation guided by artificial force fields , 1998, CHI.

[11]  James T. Kajiya,et al.  Ray tracing complex scenes , 1986, SIGGRAPH.

[12]  David P. Luebke,et al.  Portals and mirrors: simple, fast evaluation of potentially visible sets , 1995, I3D '95.

[13]  松田 晃一,et al.  Virtual Reality Modeling Language , 1997 .

[14]  Michael Zyda,et al.  NPSNET and the Naval Postgraduate School Graphics and Video Laboratory , 1993, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[15]  Roger J. Hubbold,et al.  MAVERIK—the Manchester virtual environment interface kernel , 1996 .

[16]  Peter Lamb,et al.  Performance Evaluation of Portable Graphics Software and Hardware for Scientific Visualization , 1994 .

[17]  Stephen Robert Pettifer,et al.  An operating environment for large scale virtual reality , 1999 .