A highly flexible virtual reality system

Virtual reality (VR) systems utilize more and more input and output media in order to make virtual environments more realistic. Furthermore, VR developers nowadays concentrate on rich interaction and behavior. This causes the need for a new type of VR development system architecture. In this paper such a new architecture is proposed and discussed. Its key features include support for new input and output media, device independence, and rapid behavioral prototyping. The Lightning VR system is introduced as a prototype for the presented architecture. It has already shown its usefulness in several industrial applications as design reviews, marketing events, assembly planing, etc.