Development

VR Application Development Frameworks

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CAVELib

Developped by VRCO.
Description: CAVELib is the most widely used Application Programmer's Interface (API) for developing applications for immersive displays. The philosophy of the CAVELib is to let the developer concentrate on their application and let the CAVELib handle the difficulties of VR. The CAVELib's API is simple but powerful, only a fraction of the API's capabilities are required to create an immersive application, yet it has an extensive API to meet even the most advanced developer's needs. The CAVELib API provides the building blocks to handle the intricacies of creating robust applications for Virtual Environments. Some of the items the CAVELib abstracts away for a developer are, window and viewport creation, viewer-centered perspective calculations, displaying to multiple graphics channels, multi-processing and multi-threading, cluster synchronization and data sharing, and stereoscopic viewing. The CAVELib dramatically extends a developer's abilities to create solutions with scalable, immersive 3D representations without having to contend with operating system, display system, and device-level programming details. Furthermore, the CAVELib's networking capabilities allows collaboration, interaction and data sharing with users across the hall or around the world.
License: Commercial

DIVERSE

Virginia Tech, Open Tech, NIST, ONR and other users are actually developing DIVERSE.
Description: DIVERSE is a cross-platform, open source, API for developing virtual reality applications that can run almost anywhere. DIVERSE currently runs on Linux, IRIX. Support for Windows XP and Mac OS X is under development. The goal of DIVERSE is to enable developers to quickly build applications that will run on the desktop as well as various immersive systems. To avoid hindering development DIVERSE is designed without the "center of the universe" paradigm; you only use the parts of DIVERSE that you need. This allows DIVERSE to interact with many other APIs and toolkits like, OpenGL, Open Scene Graph, SGI Open GL Performer, and Coin.
License: Open Source: GNU LGPL and GPL

Equalizer

Developed by Eyescale Software GmbH and the Visualization and Multimedia Lab, University of Zurich.
Description: Equalizer is an open source programming interface and resource management system for scalable OpenGL applications. An Equalizer application can run unmodified on any visualization system, from a singlepipe workstation to large scale graphics clusters and multi-GPU workstations. Equalizer is built upon a parallel OpenGL-based programming interface solving problems that are common to any multipipe application. The API is minimally invasive, making application porting as easy as possible while delivering maximum performance.
License: Open Source: GNU LGPL
Notice: Commercial support and services for Equalizer developers and users is offered by Eyescale Software GmbH.

Quest3D VR Edition

Developed by Act-3D.
Description: Quest3D VR edition allows users to connect virtual reality hardware and control the environment. Data gloves can be used to simulate hand movement and trackers can be used for motion tracking and in addition multi-screen synchronization.
License: Commercial

Virtools

Developed by Dassault Systèmes.
Description: Virtools technology permits to develop exceptional interactive real-time applications for industry and games production. Whether for online, desktop-based and large-scaled interactive digital mock-ups, Virtools solutions allow creating real-time interactive experiences with superior graphics and complex interactivity.
License: Commercial

Vizard VR Toolkit

Developed by WorldViz.
Description: Vizard Virtual Reality Toolkit permit you to build complete, interactive 3D content. Designed for rapid prototyping, Vizard gets you creating fast and provides the resources to deploy even the most challenging applications. With Vizard, even someone with no programming experience can leap into the world of interactive 3D content and soon discover what it's like to have an untethered imagination.
License: Commercial

VR Juggler

Developed at the Virtual Reality Applications Center (VRAC) laboratory at the Iowa State University.
Description: The VR Juggler project was started in 1997 by Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira and a team of students at Iowa State University's Virtual Reality Applications Center. This ongoing work has produced a freely available open source, community-oriented virtual reality application development framework. VR Juggler is released under the GNU LGPL and will always be available for anyone and everyone to use free of charge.
License: Open Source: GNU LGPL
Notice: Commercial support and services for VR Juggler's users is offered by the Infiscape Corporation.

Visualization Library

Developed by Michele Bosi
Description: Visualization Library is an open source C++ middleware for 2D/3D graphics applications based on the industry standard OpenGL 2.1, designed to develop professional applications for the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Linux/X11 operating systems. Visualization Library alpha 1 supports advanced features like OpenGL Shading Language, Frame Buffer Objects, Multiple Render Targets, Vertex and Pixel Buffer Objects, KdTree/AABB frustum culling, multilingual Unicode-based text engine, advanced texturing, DDS cubemaps, mipmaps, compressed textures and much more. Visualization Library can be especially useful in 3D/2D scientific visualization, virtual reality, augmented reality, visual simulation, data visualization, presentations, multimedia applications, special effects, 3d/2d games.
License: Open Source: GNU GPL 3
Notice: A commercial license is also available for non open source proprietary software.