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OpenTracker: A flexible software design for three-dimensional interaction

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Abstract

Tracking is an indispensable part of any virtual reality and augmented reality application. While the need for quality of tracking, in particular for high performance and fidelity, has led to a large body of past and current research, little attention is typically paid to software engineering aspects of tracking software. To address this issue we describe a software design and implementation that applies the pipes-and-filter architectural pattern to provide a customizable and flexible way of dealing with tracking data and configurations. The contribution of this work cumulates in the development of a generic data flow network library called OpenTracker to deal specifically with tracking data. The flexibility of the data flow network approach is demonstrated in a set of development scenarios and prototype applications in the area of mobile augmented reality.

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Acknowledgements

The presented work was sponsored by the Austrian Science Foundation FWF under contracts no. P14470 and Y193, and Vienna University of Technology by Forschungsinfrastrukturvorhaben TUWP16/2002. We would like to thank Michael Knapp and the students of the Virtual Reality lab course for their dedicated work on the building model. OpenTracker is available as an Open Source software project from the web address http://www.studierstube.org/opentracker/

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB12PZ, UK

    Gerhard Reitmayr

  2. Graz University of Technology, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Dieter Schmalstieg

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  1. Gerhard Reitmayr
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  2. Dieter Schmalstieg
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Correspondence to Dieter Schmalstieg.

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Reitmayr, G., Schmalstieg, D. OpenTracker: A flexible software design for three-dimensional interaction. Virtual Reality 9, 79–92 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-005-0006-2

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