CAVELib™ is a powerful application programmer interface (API) that provides the cornerstone for creating robust interactive three-dimensional (i3D) environments. Use of CAVELib dramatically increases the ability to create visual solutions for a multitude of display technologies without concerning the developer with the intricacies of programming for a multi-wall or cluster system. CAVELib's API abstracts the difficulty of those details, enabling developers to build high-end i3D applications to meet their unique challenges using IRIX®, HP-UX, Solaris™, Windows®, or Linux™ operating systems, on either enterprise systems or PC clusters.
i3D applications bring the capacity for engaging visual information from multiple perspectives, which enhances understanding and increases the efficiency in gaining knowledge. CAVELib can be used to develop i3D applications for a host of essential processes, including product development, research, engineering, manufacturing, training, medicine, and marketing. CAVELib applications have been written to allow users to view multiple design iterations without expensive design mock-ups, as well as communicate virtually face-to-face with collaborators around the world.
With no effort on the developer's part, CAVELib calculates off-axis perspective transformation matrices for the display device, synchronizes multiple display processes, and draws stereoscopic views. Organizations choosing to use i3D display systems should employ CAVELib to achieve rapid deployment to these systems.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: The CAVELib has had over a decade of development and use since the CAVE's first debut at the 1992 ACM Siggraph convention in Chicago. The CAVELib was designed and developed at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory under the direction of Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin, with principle programming work by Carolina Cruz-Neira, Marek Czernuszenko, and Dave Pape. The development of the CAVELib has also been greatly affected and improved though its wide spread uses in research and academic areas. These improvements came namely through the valuable input of the talented staff and students at the National Center for Super Computing Applications and Argonne National Labratories. Additional input has come from the participants in the various international exhibitions of VR technology that were based on the CAVELib, including VROOM at Siggraph94, and the I-Way at Supercomputing in 1995. VRCO humbly acknowledges the hard work and brilliant thought of all of the people who have made the CAVELib the robust set of libraries that it has become. You, as a user, are part of this continual advancement of i3D and the CAVELib, and your input is an important contribution. We welcome your comments, opinions, advice and suggestions, please send them to the support@vrco.com.