intro — Introduction to FreeVR user commands
Section 1 of the FreeVR manual describes user commands and tools such as sample virtual reality applications, input device test programs and utilities to reverse engineer serial and socket protocols. Combined, these programs are useful for setting up, configuring and even operating a virtual reality system.
FreeVR immersive experiences include artistic worlds, fun worlds as well as data visualization worlds. The type and style of virtual world can be whatever the application developer can produce.
The "travel" application is a mostly constant world filled with colorful boxes and pyramids. A single white-pyramid has been placed in the virtual world, and thus allows the user to travel relative to that one object using the joystick. All the other objects are placed in the real-world (and therefore don't actually travel), but are positioned in strategically interesting locations for testing inside a CAVE or other virtual reality display.
The "inputs" application simply gives a live presentation of all the inputs received by the configured virtual reality system. This alone has great value, but "inputs" also serves well as an input server/repeater.
Three other utilities are "fvri.tcl", "cave2fvr", and "ipcrms". The "fvri.tcl" program provides a GUI interface to a running FreeVR application to analyze and optionally modify the parameters of the application. The "cave2fvr" program converts old-style CAVE configuration files into FreeVR configuration files. The "ipcrms" program is used to clean up left-over shared memory segments when an application undergoing development crashes and leaves behind unused segments.
inputs(1fv), travel(1fv), joytest(1fv), eviotest(1fv), vrpntest(1fv), vruiddtest(1fv), fobtest(1fv), freevrrc(5FV) freevr(7fv)
Additional documentation is available at the FreeVR web site:
Here is the most current citation to use when citing FreeVR:
Copyright 2021, Bill Sherman, All rights reserved.