Whose idea was it to announce this on April Fools Day?!
From reading the limited information available on their website I think this
framework would offer some useful features for my project. Does anyone have
experience or an opinion about this technology/company?
cheers,
Richard
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 1:24 PM, Len Granowetter lengr...@mak.com wrote:
Fellow members of the OpenSceneGraph community,
VT MAK (aka MAK Technologies) is proud to announce the launch today of
VR-Vantage (http:\\www.VR-Vantage.com) - a new 3D application development
environment based on OpenSceneGraph!
MAK has been involved in visual simulation for over 16 years now, and over
the years, we've talked to a lot of people who have expressed frustration
about the state of the 3D visualization market: Commercial image generators
(IGs) always have great features out of the box, but they are usually closed
systems - often tied to a vendor’s content-generation toolchain, and often
without a toolkit API for user customization or extension. On the other end
of the spectrum are scene graph toolkits like OSG - which offer unlimited
flexibility, but require lots of application development and content
integration work just to get to the point where you can really start adding
your project-specific capabilities. What's really been missing is a product
that provides full-featured out-of-the-box applications, *and* the ability
to extend, customize or embed any of that application-level functionality
into custom applications. Missing...until now!
What we are offering with VR-Vantage is the ability to turbo-charge your
OSG-based development project. A typical OSG user (particularly in the
visual simulation domain) spends lots of money incorporating content, and
lots of software development time implementing or integrating
application-level functionality, such as:
• Game-like or virtual-globe-like navigation interfaces
• Human character animation
• Real-time trees and vegetation
• Graphical User Interface
• A sky/lighting/environment model
• An entity management layer
• Full-featured DIS/HLA support
• Top-quality 3D vehicle and cultural feature models
• Run-time configuration system
• Informational overlays about simulated objects
• Fully-integrated Distributed Rendering for multi-channel displays
• Streaming terrain elevation and imagery from web-mapping services
• Heads-up-displays or interactive cockpit displays
With VR-Vantage, we've built all of this content and capability into an
inexpensive off-the-shelf product. We've licensed all the necessary
3rd-party technology, and spent the past two years integrating and
developing a powerful application-level OSG-based toolkit - so that you
don't have to do it yourself! The VR-Vantage applications, which include
the MAK Stealth viewer, and a new desktop IG called Vantage IG, already
incorporate all of the following as standard features: IDV's SpeedTree
vegetation, BDI's DI-Guy human characters, DiSTI's GL Studio cockpit
displays, SunDog Software's SilverLining clouds and environment, Pelican
Mapping's osgEarth streaming elevation and imagery, a customizable Qt-based
GUI, native HLA/DIS support based on MAK's own VR-Link toolkit,
multi-channel distributed rendering, and a library of high-quality 3D models
from companies like Simthetiq and RealDB. And no 3rd-party run-time licenses
are required to use any of these capabilities!
But you still retain the same level of extensibility you’d have with
OpenSceneGraph. VR-Vantage offers a higher-level API above the scene graph,
to provide as much power as possible. But you always have direct access to
the OSG layer as well, so that you can easily incorporate existing OSG
nodekits and file loaders, and can continue working with the API you're
comfortable with. Plus, you’ll have MAK to support you, so you can stay
focused on your project-specific tasks.
Start with the VR-Vantage Toolkit, and you can immediately begin working on
your application-specific functionality, giving you a leg up on your
competition, and allowing you to execute your projects with much lower risk.
VR-Vantage was previewed at I/ITSEC 2008, and version 1.0 shipped today,
March 31, 2009. For more information about VR-Vantage, please see http:\\
www.VR-Vantage.com, or visit http:\\www.mak.com.
VT MAK, (formerly known as MAK Technologies), a company of VT Systems,
develops software to link, simulate and visualize the virtual world. We are
best known for our DIS/HLA networking toolkits (VR-Link and the MAK RTI),
for our computer-generated-forces simulation toolkit (VR-Forces), and for
our 3D visualization product (MAK Stealth).
-Len
--
Len Granowetter
VT MAK
work: (617) 876-8085 Ext. 121
cell: (617) 256-4368
email: lengr...@mak.com
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