In this book, we present a “how-to” for writing VR Juggler applications. We will explain concepts used in VR Juggler and present carefully annotated example code whenever appropriate. There are two groups of people who should read this book:
Those who are required to read it in order to do a project for work or school. To those in this category, fear not—VR Juggler is very simple to use after getting through the initial learning stages. It is a powerful tool that will allow the creation of interesting and powerful applications very quickly.
Those who are just interested in creating compelling, interesting VR applications. VR Juggler facilitates the construction of extremely powerful applications that will run on nearly any combination of hardware architecture and software platform.
To help readers get the most from this book, recommendations follow to provide an idea of what previous experience is necessary. Various programming skills are needed, of course, but programming for VR requires more than just knowledge of a given programming language. VR Juggler takes advantage of many programming design patterns and advanced concepts to make it more powerful, more flexible, and more extensible. A good background in mathematics is helpful for performing the myriad transformations that must be applied to three-dimensional (3D) geometry.
To get the most from this chapter, there are a few prerequisites:
C++ programming experience
Some graphics programming background (e.g., OpenGL, OpenGL Performer, etc.)
Reasonable mathematical background (linear algebra knowledge is very useful)
For some of the advanced sections of this book, it is recommended that readers review the VR Juggler architecture book. This is optional, though it may be helpful in gaining a quicker understanding of some topics and concepts.
Readers who already have experience with other VR software development environments can easily skim through this book and find the relevant new information. The book is designed for easy skimming. Simply look at the headings to get a good determination of what should be read and what may be skipped.
This book is organized into three main parts:
Introduction: The introduction to the key VR Juggler application development concept, application objects. We also describe common helper classes that simplify the process of writing applications.
Writing applications: The presentation of application development including how to get input from devices and how to write applications for each of the supported graphics application programmer interfaces (APIs).
Advanced topics: An extension of the previous chapters showing how to incorporate run-time reconfiguration into applications and how to write multi-threaded applications.