Please send information...

[munzner]

> We are interested in doing both geometry and Virtual Reality type
> experiments with geomview. In particular, if you have had any
> experiences connecting your 3D position trackers to your system I would
> be interested to hear about them.  We have a Spaceball and an Alias
> bird available, and we are getting some virtual reality headgear soon.

Since geomview is controllable by an external program through the
command language, a program can use data from an exotic tracking
device to contruct positioning commands for objects or cameras. Nils
McCarthy has tried this last year with the low-end PowerGlove. The
PowerGlove was actually hooked up to a NeXT, since there was public
domain software for the high resolution mode of the glove for the NeXT
but only low-res for the SGI. You can get details from him
(nils at geom.umn.edu). There is a geomview module for stereo viewing,
which might be adaptable for headgear use, written by Stuart Levy
(slevy at geom.umn.edu, is on the software alias).

> Could you please mail me the latest instructions on how to ftp geomview
> etc.?  The file I have is over a year old.  I am hoping your default
> message includes the system requirements (memory, graphics capabilities
> necessary , etc.).

Geomview is available via anonymous ftp from geom.umn.edu. If you do
not know how to use anonymous ftp, I can send details. The most
current version is consists of documentation, executables for geomview
and many modules, and data files. We will eventually get together a
new source release. Geomview should work on any Silicon Graphics
workstation. I think the minimum memory that SGIs are shipped with is
16MB, which is fine. As usual, more memory often means better
performance.

Tamara Munzner          ((555) 555-5555
munzner at geom.umn.edu    The Geometry Center