NeuroVR Manual

NeuroVR is a cost-free virtual reality platform (wikipedia definition) platform based on open-source software (wikipedia definition) , that allows providing the clinical professional with a cost-free VE editor, which allows non-expert users to easily modify a virtual world (wikipedia definition) , to best suit the needs of the clinical setting.

Check here the quality of the Virtual Environments you can modify in the NeuroVR Editor and interact with the NeuroVR Player

The NeuroVR platform includes two main components, the Editor and the Player; they are implemented using open-source components that provide advanced features; this includes an interactive rendering (wikipedia definition) system based on OpenGL (wikipedia definition) which allows for high quality images.

The NeuroVR Editor is developed by customizing the User Interface of Blender, an integrated suite of 3D (wikipedia definition) creation tools available on all major operating systems, under the GNU General Public License (wikipedia definition) ; this implies that the program can be distributed even with the complete source code.

Thanks to these features, clinicians and researchers have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the NeuroVR Editor software, so that the whole VR community benefits.

Using the NeuroVR Editor, the psychological stimuli/stressors appropriate for any given scenario can be chosen from a rich database of 2D and 3D objects, and easily placed into the pre-designed virtual scenario by using an icon-based interface (no programming skills are required).

In addition to static objects, the NeuroVR Editor allows to overlay on the 3D scene video composited with a transparent alpha channel (wikipedia definition) allowing a convincing chroma key effect (wikipedia definition).

The other component is the NeuroVR Player  which allows to navigate and interact with the VEs created using the NeuroVR Editor. The NeuroVR Player, leverages two major open-source projects in the VR field:

Both are building components that the NeuroVR player integrates with ad-hoc code to handle the simulations.  

When running a simulation, the system offers a set of standard features that contribute to increase the realism of the simulated scene. These include collision detection (wikipedia definition) to control movements in the environment, realistic walk-style motion, advanced lighting techniques for enhanced image quality, and streaming of video textures using alpha channel for transparency.

The player can be configured for two basic visualization modalities: immersive and non-immersive.

• The immersive modality allows the scene to be visualized using a head-mounted display (wikipedia definition), either in stereoscopy (wikipedia definition) or in mono-mode; compatibility with head-tracking sensor is also provided.
• In the non-immersive modality, the virtual environment can be displayed using a desktop monitor or a wall projector. The user can interact with the virtual environment using either keyboard commands, a mouse or a joypad, depending on the hardware configuration chosen.