------------------------- AERO "ADVENTURES IN VIRTUAL MECHANICS" ------------------------- See also www-page: http://www.ee.uwa.edu.au/~braunl/aero/ AERO is an X-window based tool for simulation and visualization of rigid-body systems. AERO contains a 3D scene editor for designing simple blocks world scenes. Objects may be placed in space, linked to each other, and forces may be exerted onto them. In animation mode, the simulation of the scene entered is carried out in real time (depending on scene complexity) displaying 3D wire frames. Also, a flag can be set to generate scene description files for each time point as input files for a ray tracing program, producing photorealistic output. In both modes, wire frame and ray tracing scenes, the generation of stereo images is possible. In the case of real time wire frames a red-green representation of the scene is rendered, which can be viewed with red-green glasses. For the ray tracing output, a binocular pair of scene descriptions is generated for each time step. AERO can be used for exploring the physical laws of mechanics and also for generating realistic computer animations. AERO is available free of charge as public domain software. Software and documentation can be copied via "anonymous ftp" over the Internet. The address of our server is: http://www.ee.uwa.edu.au/~braunl/aero/ftp/ For further information on AERO see our web-page; http://www.ee.uwa.edu.au/~braunl/aero/ ------------------------------------ For installing the binaries: copy the appropriate binary file, decompress and de-tar it: e.g. gzcat aero.sun4.tar.gz | tar xf - copy the file "xaero" into your local "bin" directory, then copy the file "XAero" (note the capital letters) in your local "app-defaults" directory and set the environment variable appropriately: e.g. setenv XAPPLRESDIR ~your_name/your_app-defaults/ then start AERO: e.g. xaero Trouble shooting; In case you encounter the erroor message after starting AERO: "Error: Widget EM_Darstellung3D has zero width and/or height" then there is a problem with your installing the "app-defaults-file" (AERO cannot find it). Re-try the installation instructions above.A ------------------------------------ For scene rendering you need: POVray public domain ray tracing software from alfred.ccs.carleton.ca (134.117.1.1) in pub/pov-ray/ ------------------------------------ For viewing the animations you need: MPEG-decoding software from toe.cs.berkeley.edu (128.32.149.117) in pub/multimedia/mpeg ------------------------------------ For compiling the sources you need: X11-libraries (best: Release 5 or newer) Athena-Widget-Set FWF-Widget-Set from ftp.let.rug.nl (129.125.8.20) in pub/FWF/fwf.tar.Z ANSI C compiler (e.g. gcc, version 2.3.3 or newer) ld or gld ------------------------------------ Academic reference: Keller, Stolz, Ziegler, Braunl: Virtual Mechanics -- Simulation and Animation of Rigid Body Systems, Report of the Computer Science Department, Univ. Stuttgart, no. 8/93, August 1993 Hartmut Keller keller@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de Horst Stolz stolz@isa.de Andreas Ziegler Andreas.ziegler@3dechotech.com Thomas Braunl braunl@ee.uwa.edu.au ________________________________________________________________________ Thomas Braunl e-mail braunl@ee.uwa.edu.au Dept. of Electrical & Electronic Engineering phone +61 8 9380-1763 The University of Western Australia fax +61 8 9380-1168 Nedlands, Perth, WA 6907, Australia http://www.ee.uwa.edu.au/~braunl ________________________________________________________________________