VaiR: System Architecture of a Generic Virtual Reality Engine

Investigating various virtual reality (VR) tools, we have described main components for a generic VR Engine. In this paper, we discuss the system architecture of a VR Engine (VaiR), and demonstrate the basic elements of this generic VR programming interface. The VaiR Engine integrates VR hardware and software within a graphics Application Programming Interface (API) (e.g. OpenSceneGraph). The main advantage of the VaiR Engine is the ability to use stereoscopic goggles, trackers, head mounted displays, etc with a number of 3D Modeling and Animation Packages (e.g. 3ds Max and Softimage) and scripting languages (e.g., XML). VaiR combines the important characteristics of many other VR tools and brings them together to generate a more powerful tool. Thus, it provides us a suitable ground to build a flexible multi-purpose VR Engine.