VR anyone?

we are in the process of embarknig on a VR ride, but it is kinda hard to decide what tool to go for, as they are quite pricey, and what you get for your money seems to vary ALOT.
does anyone have any experience with today’s VR tools?

it looks like we are settling for vr4max, but i am trying to find alternatives, as i don’t like the workflow and what you can do seems very limited. there’s no scripting support or 2d overlays. overall - i don’t like it.

i’ve been an anark fan since the early beta’s, but a pricetag of $3,499 is a bit hard to swallow - and firefox no workie…

unity3D seemed cool, with ageia physics and all, even seemed to have an active community and a nice pricetag. but i am a little put off by it’s childishness and mac’ishness…

does anyone have any experience with VR they would like to share?

I think there has been a few threads on this… these are the ones I know:

Quest3D (expensive and steep learning curve, but very good results)
RTRE (fairly easy but a bit limited)
BS Contact (VRML player)
Acrobat 3D
Ogre3D (open source development project)

We are doing some development test using Quest3D, which so far is my favorite.

… oh and not to forget my danish friends at ‘Turntool’ - http://www.turntool.com/

im still wondering if anyones tried the free quake3 engine for arch viz walk throughs hehehe

we tried the half-life2 engine for a while, but seemed a LOT of work - particularly on materials

thanks for input jonasa!
ah yes, there is another thread about this, it’s old and concerning walkthroughs, not really what i am after - so i took a chance and started a new one

after some quick surfing, here’s some feedback :

turntool - cool but too simple
quest3D - pricey and graphical interface (no scirpting? )
rtre - too much like vr4max
BS contact - umm, my french ain’t that good…
acrobat3D - too simple
ogre3D - HEY! this looks interesting, and dang it’s free! gotta look into that one

hmm, so far i think unity3D might be a winner because of it’s price,physics, scripting and community.
although ogre3D looks cool, it kind of has a buggy open sourcy feeling to it…

does quest3D have any scripting capabilities?
like : if (ball.x < 100) {ball.x++}

if not, at that price, we might as well go for anark then…

regarding the game engines, being free and all, they are very tempting to check out considering the quality of games thesse days - but i am a little discouraged by jonasa’s ‘a LOT of work’ comment

…and we are kind of aiming for a product visualization thingy, so a game engine might be a bit off…or maybe not?

here’s a good thread that talks about the game engine topic:
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16119&highlight=hks

opps
i didn’t see the thread was already mentioned. its there in case anyone wants to read it.
-joe

Nova looks pretty good http://www.vertice.fr/ a bit pricey though.

i’ve try’d this one
http://www.lumiscaphe.com/www4/EN\_home2007.html

wich i’ve found really promising. also very expensive and still under construction, but damn nice.

nova looks cool, with scripting and all - but hell, what a price!

wow, patchwork3D! AA, mipmap, HDR and GI all in realtime!!! that sounds to good to be true…
considering nova at 7000€ excl. VAT, and anark at around 2500€ - 795.00€ for patchwork ain’t bad (or is that the price for instantViz?)

…but there’s no scripting, exe ouptut or activeX support for patchwork3D?

anachreon : Want Unity now? Get a Mac. Is it that difficult to figure out?

what the hell?!? unity is mac only!?!, raaarhh!!

i had finally settled for unity, being really impressed with price and features, only to find out that it is OSX only, and that a pc port will never happen, aarh, this is to dumb!

ohf, guess i’m back at the expensive anark idea again…or wait, forgot about ogre3D, gotta check that one out

Kimgar.. I think you need to check out quest3D - its programming/scripting facilities are quite advanced, although it’s all done through the schematic view.

I have just started playing with it - possibilities seems amazing and results are stunning (check the demos), but again very steep learning curve, took me a day to figure how to get a simple model imported into and environment.

- and it exports to exe or can be run in a browser.

yep, i’ve sent a mail to see3D, for information about quest3D trial versions.

ogre3D seems to hardcore, i think it’s down to either quest, anark or turntool

let’s see what will happen with the trial situation

you can download a trial of version 3.5 from their website http://www.quest3d.com/ - save is disabled, but should give a good impression of what you can do.

Also… don’t forget to visit the user-forum for demos, scenes and gossip.

they have a demo without save available yes, but i saw somewhere on their forums that a 30 day trial with full permissions might also be available

well, gotta check out the demo anyways, find out what schematic scripting is all about…

yeah, I got a 30 day version of v. 3.0 - unfortunately it ran out before I finished my research.

Don’t know if I should ask for an extension…

oh.. and BTW - if you need it now, call them… it took them a couple of weeks to reply on my email request.

there’s no rush yet, got lots of things to check out first - but thanks for the tip!

hey! i am most impressed by the service and helpfulness of peter over at see3D.
i already got my trial key and a lot of useful info regarding the VR scene. thumbs up for see3D!

jonas, you must have made your inquiry at a bad day
peter also informed that quest will have a major point release mid 2007, so you have somthing to look forward to!

i feel i’ve been converted from an Anark fan to a Quest fan now

let’s see what quest has to offer…