Welcome to the VRS Web Site!

The Virtual Rendering System is a computer graphics software library for constructing interactive 3D applications. It provides a large collection of 3D rendering components which facilitate implementing 3D graphics applications and experimenting with 3D graphics and imaging algorithms.

VRS is implemented as a C++ library. Applications can incorporate VRS as C++ library based on the C++ API. In addition, we provide a complete Tcl/Tk binding of the C++ API, called iVRS. You can deploy VRS on common platforms such as X11/Unix and Windows 95/98/NT. It is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

The Virtual Rendering System represents a stable, continuously extended framework for real-time 3D application development. It forms part of the university education at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute at the University of Potsdam. A large number of industrial software legacy systems are using VRS as real-time 3D graphcis kernel such as the T-Mobile radio network system. For an overview of scientific and commercial projects visit the project pages of the computer graphics division at the Hasso-Plattner-Institut. Some results of our computer graphic and real-time rendering seminar/lab, demonstrating the use of VRS for game programming, can be found here.

VRS Features

• Large collection of 2D shapes, 3D shapes, graphics attribute
• Hierarchical scene modeling based on scene graphs and behavior graphs
• Innovative rendering techniques such as multipass rendering
• Support for multiple low-level rendering systems such as OpenGL and RenderMan
• Support for 2D imaging

News

• 07.06.2007: Added basic support (without extensions) for OpenAL http://www.openal.org. Further, streaming of OGG files with Vorbis codec is available http://xiph.org/vorbis/
• 25.05.2007: Added basic version of a Collada importer. Currently it supports triangulated meshes, phong materials, and textures for the diffuse material channel.
• 01.05.2007: Game Programming with VRS, The results of a computer graphic and real-time rendering seminar/lab are now online.
• 24.02.2007: VRS 3.3 FINAL has been released. Check out the VRS-news for more information of the recent changes.
• 14.12.2006: A new beta development version of VRS-3.3 is available for download, containing lots of improvements and changes.
• 17.07.2006: The Subversion repository moved to a new server, so working copies should be relocated. See the download section for the new location.
• 26.06.2006: The VRS-team currently converts the source repositories to the Subversion VCS. More in the news and download area.
• 16.02.2006: In addition to the already included SceneGraphAnalyzer, our project now offers several scene graph operators to optimize a scene.
• 23.01.2006: Information about the new stereo rendering support, and rendering text to an image, you can get here.
• 05.09.2005: The VRS now supports the GL_EXT_framebuffer_object extension. The news entry provides more information.
• 09.05.2005: The VRS has been updated with support for the X3D-format. More information can be found here.
• 07.04.2005: The Build Notes have been updated corresponding to the changes recently made to the VRS.
• 07.01.2005: The VRS project has been split into several smaller subsystems. For further information look here.
• 17.11.2004: This site now provides Build Notes. The readme.txt and installation notes of the VRS project have been updated.
• 28.10.2004: The development branch of VRS has been extended with more sophisticated support of the OpenGL Shading Language.
• 14.07.2004: We have updated the list of VRS Features, in particular the class overview.
• 04.07.2004: A new development version of VRS-3.3 is available for download, containing lots of improvements and changes.
• 28.11.2003: The version 1.08 of iVRS has been released. The new version is in sync with VRS-3.2.
• 27.11.2003: VRS 3.2 FINAL has been released. Check out the VRS-news for more information of the recent changes.
• 22.07.2003: We have provided two examples of Non-Photorealistic Rendering in VRS.
• 23.06.2003: iVRS 1.07 has been released. This version is based on VRS-3.2alpha, so it supports the same features.
• 18.06.2003: The alpha version of VRS 3.2 is available for download. This version contains many enhancements compared to VRS 3.1.
• 03.04.2003: VRS 3.1 FINAL has been released.
• 20.02.2003: VRS 3.1 ALPHA has been released.
• 31.01.2003: iVRS 1.06 with support for Tcl 8.4 has been released.
• 06.11.2002: We have added an example how to use the new progressive mesh component in VRS, that allows for simple level-of-detail rendering.
• 04.11.2002: Two parts of the upcoming VRS book can be downloaded now here. Expect other parts of the book to be released in the next months.
• 12.09.2002: The first VRS-newsletter has been released.
• 20.08.2002: With some delay, VRS 3.0 for Linux has been released.
• 31.07.2002: VRS 3.0 FINAL has been released.
• 14.06.2002: glutbumpmap, an example program demonstrating an experimental bump mapping technique, has been added to the CVS repository.
• 02.04.2002: VRS 3.0 (beta) has been released. Now includes: RenderMan support, QT binding, STL containers, Freetype Fonts.
• 29.11.2001: VRS for Linux (alpha) has been released.
• 27.11.2001: iVRS 1.01 has been released.
• 16.11.2001: New snapshot includes 3DS support, video textures for OpengGL and additional examples.
• 16.11.2001: VRS repository can be accessed with CVS. Unix support will follow soon.
• 29.10.2001: iVRS, a Tcl/Tk package covering most of the VRS API, has been released.
• 10.09.2001: The VRS documentation is online.
• 21.08.2001: New snapshot includes Camera attribute, Shadow technique and Mirror technique (for OpenGL)
• 30.07.2001: First multipass rendering components have been added.
• 01.06.2001: The new web address www.vrs3d.org is online.
• 20.05.2001: An alpha version of VRS 3.0 is under development. Namespaces have been introduced and the name scheme has been simplified.
• 02.04.2001: The VRS group moved to the Hasso-Plattner-Institute at the Potsdam University. A new infrastructure has been set up.

What happened to MAM/VRS?

VRS was formerly known and named "MAM/VRS". We decided to use the more compact name VRS instead. All parts of MAM have been integrated into VRS, in particular the scene graph and the behavior graph.

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