The Oklahoma Virtual Academic Laboratory (OVAL) is a VR-Classroom application designed to encourage remote collaboration between academics. Up to one hundred users can inhabit the same VR space, import 3D content, and analyze those models with built-in tools.
Table of contents:
OVAL uses one slim, movable menu to provide you with many functional tools to help analyze or display your 3D content.
| Menu Feature | Notes |
|---|---|
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Clicking the "Move This" button on the top-left of the menu will allow you to place the menu anywhere you like for your viewing convenience (click again to "drop" the menu). |
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OVAL is networked and allows users to meet and view 3D models in a shared "room". As long as users join the same room, they will share the same space. One user will have complete controls, and the other users will only control their own local position in the room. |
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Specify whether the controller(s) should move you, the light in the room, or the 3D models in the room. |
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This option allows you to select the current mode (e.g. drag, annotate, indicate, screenshot, measure, and video modes). |
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Annotation mode allows you to "draw" on 3D model(s). Your laser will paint on the first surface it touches when you pull the trigger, and you can control the color and line width of the resultant annotation. |
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Measure mode allows you to place to dots on or around your model. OVAL will tell you the straight-line distance between those two points to assist in measuring the model. |
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The model panel allows loading model from the model directory and displays any models previously loaded. Visibility of specific models can also be toggled on or off. OVAL supports several file formats, including .obj, .stl, .blend, .fbx, and .dae. |
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Clipping plane mode applies a clipping plane to models in the scene, enabling cutaways and cross-sections through 3D data. |
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Screenshot model takes screenshots when the controller trigger is pressed. Screenshots are saved to the screenshot directory. |
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Video model provides video capture functionality; press the button to start taking a video, and press again to stop. |
The OVAL configuration file, OVAL.config.text, is expected to be a simple text file in the same directory from which the OVAL application is run. This text file controls certain user-configurable options for the OVAL system.
Note: in some situations, we may wish to combine space-separated words into a single item; in such cases, the words should be "enclosed in quotation marks", e.g. "Two words", "John Smith", "C:\My Folder\Fun Data\"
Lines that start with a hash character (#) are treated as comments and ignored:
# This is a comment line!
Custom colors for e.g. use with the annotation tool can be defined using the Color command. A custom color requires a name and an RGB color definition, with each of the three values in the RGB triplet ranging from 0 to 1. An optional alpha value may be specified to control transparency; where not present, an alpha value of 1.0 (i.e., fully opaque) is assumed.
# This color is called DarkRed; no alpha channel is specified, so we default to alpha = 1.0 (i.e., fully opaque)
Color DarkRed 0.5 0 0
# This color is called TransparentGreen, and has an alpha value of 0.5
Color TransparentGreen 0 1 0 0.5
Different VR systems may place the VR "camera" (i.e. the users eyes) in different starting locations. Although the OVAL system attempts to reset the VR camera position on startup, sometimes it may be necessary to adjust the initial camera location in the VR scene. The VROffset setting allows the user to provide an x,y,z offset to apply to the VR camera on startup:
# Move the initial VR camera placement by -2 units on the x axis
VROffset -2 0 0
A default source directory is used when loading 3D models in OVAL. OVAL users can only browse for models in this directory, and this directory is assumed to be the base location when models are loaded in networked multi-user rooms. The ModelPath is therefore both a security measure (i.e., users cannot browse data outside this directory in the OVAL application) and a relative file system path way to allow the same model to be loaded across different computers despite potential differences in absolute file paths.
# Windows-style path; specify 3D model files are located in "My Models" subdirectory of Desktop
# (or subdirectory thereof). Note: quotes to handle file paths containing a space character!
ModelPath "D:\Desktop\My models\"
# *nix-style path; specify 3D model files are in "models/" subdirectory of OVAL application directory
ModelPath models/
When using OVAL's screenshot tool, the default output path for the resultant images is the directory from which the OVAL application was run. The screenshot filename is derived from the name of the current user (see Username) and the current date and time.
# Save screenshots to the desktop (Windows-style path)
ScreenshotPath C:\Desktop\
# Save screenshots to the "output/screenshots/" subdirectory of the OVAL application directory (*nix-style path)
ScreenshotPath output/screenshots/
A local "name" is assigned to the OVAL user to identify the user in networked sessions, and to create user-specific output files such as screenshots. By default, this name is inferred from the local computer's name, but it is easy to override via Username:
# Explicitly name the current OVAL user as Room217, rather than using whatever
# name OVAL infers from the local computer's name:
Username Room217
# If we need spaces, enclose the set of words in quotation marks ...
Username "Tony Hawk"
OVAL allows multiple users in different locations to participate in the same VR spaces, referred to as "rooms". By default, the user can enter a room name using OVAL's virtual keyboard. However, it is often better to provide one or more default room names for convenient user selection. This is accomplished via Rooms:
# Specify three default rooms: Room1, MeetingSpace, and Common VR Area (note: quotes enclosing the latter)
Rooms Room1 MeetingSpace "Common VR Area"
OVAL's multi-user network code is based on infrastructure provided by Photon, which directs users to network servers with the best performance. However, this process can send users to rooms of the same name but hosted on different servers; in such cases, users are effectively in different rooms and will not "see" one another. To avoid this, OVAL allows the user to explicitly set the regional server used via the NetworkRegion option (default value: us)
# The default Photon server region for OVAL is "us" (east coast USA)
# https://doc.photonengine.com/en-us/realtime/current/connection-and-authentication/regions
NetworkRegion us
The OVAL user interface consists of one or more panels that provide specific functionality. In some cases, it may be desirable to show or hide one or more of these panels when OVAL starts. To control the UI panels shown by OVAL on startup, the DefaultPanels command may be used. The standard panel names are: MoveUIPanel, NetworkPanel, MovePanel, ModePanel, ModelPanel
# Show OVAL's default set of user interface panels
DefaultPanels MoveUIPanel NetworkPanel MovePanel ModePanel ModelPanel
# This setting may be suitable for presentation of a specific VR scene,
# where we don't need the capability to load models, join networked
# rooms, or move the lights etc. We therefore omit NetworkPanel,
# MovePanel, and ModelPanel!
DefaultPanels MoveUIPanel ModePanel
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