WorldViz PPT-E, Operating Instructions Manual, Page: 54 / 163

PPT User’s Manual
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VRPN is a tool set that has been made available to the public domain by Russell M.
Taylor II at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is designed to
implement a network-transparent interface between application programs and the
set of physical devices (tracker, etc.) used in a virtual-reality (VR) system. The idea
is to have a PC or other host at each VR station that controls the peripherals
(tracker, button device, haptic device, analog inputs, sound, etc). VRPN provides
connections between the application and all of the devices using the appropriate
class-of-service for each type of device sharing this link.
For additional information on
VRPN :
http://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/vrpn/index.html
Shared memory
The Shared memory method can be used only for connecting to Vizard VR Toolkit
render processes that are running on the same host as the PPT software. Multi-core
PCs are suitable for running both a PPT system and Vizard-based 3D rendering. (See
Using PPT with Vizard .)
Serial
When necessary, you can connect to PPT using standard RS-232 serial
communication. The method is robust but has slightly higher latency than the
methods above. The serial method becomes especially unsuitable for tracking