Software Technologies
MRGIS is designed for windows-based operating systems (OS) and up to now it has been succesfully tested on windows 98, windows NT and windows XP. The basic platform of the interface is implemented in an object-oriented (OO) style, in C++ programming language and on top of this, a number software libraries were ported.
For the graphics sub-system, a high-level computer graphics visualisation and interaction engine is designed on-top of the OpenGL libraries. Extra support for graphics operations, like textual support, comes from the GLUT API. Spatial sound capabilities are implemented based on the OpenAL API.
The tracking sub-system is responsible for image registration techniques and is realised through the capabilities of ARToolKit's tracking libraries. Moreover, the video operations are based on the DirectShow API. Finally, an MFC framework wrapps together all the above software components into a single graphical user interface.
Technical Characteristics
The main developement platform is MS Visual Studio 6. The graphics engine of MRGIS is capable of loading multimedia information such as 3D models, 3D sound, 2D images and textual information. Currently, the 3D models are only in VRML97 format but other formats are under investigation. Images that are supported by the system are BMP and TGA file formats. Text in ASCII format can be superimposed in either two-dimensional or three-dimensional mode. Finally, the generation of 3D spatial sound that is supported by the system is based on the WAV file format.
