There are a number of ways to create your own virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) app/videogame. The most popular tend to be videogame engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine which have been fine-tuned over many years. Today, Charles River Analytics – a developer of intelligent systems solutions – has announced the launch of the Virtuoso Software Development Kit (VSDK), to aid speedy development of AR and VR experiences.
VSDK is a Unity-based solution for developers looking to create naturalistic user interactions whilst supporting a wide variety of headsets (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Oculus Quest) and peripherals (bHaptics TactSuit, Leap Motion, and ManusVR gloves.)
Features of VSDK include rapid prototyping through the Reaction System without writing any code, the ability to enable immersive experiences with hand tracking and haptic feedback; a Virtual Environment Interaction Library so that users can draw from a collection of common user interactions and objects native to virtual environments, as well as being able to generate dynamic training scenarios.
“VSDK is a free, augmented/virtual reality software development kit that helps developers rapidly achieve results,” said Dr. Michael Jenkins, Senior Scientist at Charles River Analytics in a statement. “With VSDK, developers with less experience, training, and time can still quickly design augmented and virtual reality experiences with intuitive and natural interactions with virtual content.”
“New augmented and virtual reality developers have little out-of-the-box support for this historically difficult technology,” adds Dan Duggan, a software engineer at Charles River. “Even worse, new developers face a steep learning curve to achieve basic real-world functionality for augmented and virtual reality interactions. These gaps strain budgets and result in costly—and ineffective—experimentation cycles that can slow down the development timeline and jeopardize adoption of the technology.”
The Virtuoso toolkit has been in development for several years, initially aimed towards military medical training and education by advancing medical simulation systems. That effort has now advanced to the stage where VSDK is free and open-source under the MIT License, available via the Charles River Analytics website. VRFocus will continue its coverage XR related development tools, reporting back with the latest updates.