Development Methods and a Scenegraph Animation API for Cluster Driven Immersive Applications

Thumbnail Image
Date
2009-01-01
Authors
Noon, Christian
Chan, Chiu-Shui
Oliver, James
Major Professor
Advisor
Committee Member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Authors
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Organizational Unit
Journal Issue
Is Version Of
Versions
Series
Department
Mechanical Engineering
Abstract

This paper presents a scenegraph animation application programming interface (API), known as the Animation Engine, which was constructed for software developers to easily perform smooth transitions and manipulations to scenegraph nodes. A developer can use one line of code to enter the property, end state and number of frames to describe the animation, then the Animation Engine handles the rest in the background. The goal of the Animation Engine is to provide a simple API that integrates into existing applications with minimal effort. Additionally, techniques to improve virtual reality (VR) application performance on a large computer cluster are presented. These techniques include maintaining high frame rates with 4096 × 4096 pixel textures, eliminating extraneous network traffic and reducing long model loading time. To demonstrate the Animation Engine and the development techniques, an application known as the Virtual Universe was created. The Virtual Universe, designed to run in a six walled CAVE, allows users to freely explore a set of space themed environments. The architecture and development techniques for writing a stable immersive VR application on a large computer cluster, in addition to the creation of the Animation Engine, is presented in this paper.

Comments

This proceedings is from Proceedings of the World Conference on Innovative VR 2009 (New York: ASME, 2009): 81–87, doi:10.1115/WINVR2009-736. Posted with permission.

Description
Keywords
Citation
DOI
Copyright
Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2009